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TAKING IT ON HIGH 













TAKING IT ON HIGH 

Body-Strength and Brain-Power 


By 

R. R. DANIELS and BERTRAND LYON 

»» 


With Program of Daily Exercises, 
by Doctor William B. Newhall, and a Series of Menus 
and Recipes, by Mrs. R. R. Daniels 


m 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright 1921 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



PRE80 OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
DOCK MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN. N. Y. 

OCT 24 1921 


§)C!.A624930 




FOREWORD 

This book is dedicated to the man who wants 
to do more , do it better , and do it easily . 

It shows such a man how to keep his physi¬ 
cal machine tuned up to the highest working 
capacity, and it shows him how to use his pow¬ 
ers to the best possible advantage. 

It recognizes the fact that no man attains 
his greatest success without a sound body and 
a keen brain; that both are absolutely essential 
to well-balanced efficiency. 

It avoids the countless fads and fancies and 
impractical theories which the average man en¬ 
counters when he seeks a way to increase his 
physical energy and his brain power. 

It offers sane, concise, practical working 
methods. 

It appeals to all who are ambitious “to take 
it on high,” to all who would learn how to do 

big things in a big way, easily . 

The Authors. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Driver and the Machine ... 1 

II The Physical Machine. 7 

III Your Fuel and Your Force .... 17 

IV Knife and Fork Suicide.26 

V Selecting and Preparing Your Fuel . 47 

VI Every-Day Poisons That Slow Down 

Your Machine.71 

VII Care of the Skin and Clothing . . 103 

VIII Constipation.117 

IX The Big Four: Systematic Exercise, 
Regular Rest, Fresh Air and Play 

X Your View-Point.148 

XI Better Brain Action.159 

XII A Personal Inventory.176 

XIII Self-Starters.190 

XIV Common-Sense Efficiency .... 203 

XV Shock Absorbers.225 

XVI Practical Memory Training . . . 239 

XVII Working in Harmony.269 

XVIII Getting the Most Out of a Day . . 278 

XIX Tuning Up the Machine for the Day’s 

Run.288 

XX Tuning Up the Driver for the Day’s 

Run.296 

XXI The Daily Bill of Fare .... 304 

XXII The Daily Exercise Program . . . 341 

XXIII The Plan of a Day.355 

XXIV Practical Working Schedules . . . 363 

XXV Speeding Up or Slowing Down . . 370 











TAKING IT ON HIGH 


CHAPTER I 

THE MACHINE AND THE DRIVER 

Jones sat on the porch of his comfortable 
home in a modern American city and watched 
the hundreds of automobiles as they whirled 
by. Though he was well-to-do, he had never 
owned or driven a car. He made up his mind 
to join the ranks of those who ride. 

A week later, Jones might have been seen 
seated at the wheel of his newly-purchased car 
on a quiet street near his home, with a com¬ 
petent-looking individual, clad in overalls, 
seated beside him. Jones was learning to drive. 

“You have to keep your wits about you,” 
said the instructor, “and you have to think of 
several things at once. Give her more gas— 
look out there!” and the instructor grabbed the 
wheel just in time to head off a collision with 
the curb. After a strenuous half-hour, Jones’ 
brain was seething with a mixture of ideas 
1 


2 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


about when to shove in the clutch, where “low” 
was located, how to signal for a turn, rules of 
the road, traffic cops, etc. He had discovered 
that the driving of an automobile involves some 
very definite principles of mental efficiency. 

After a few busy days his instructor pro¬ 
nounced him competent, so he took his driver’s 
examination and passed with flying colors. 
The next Sunday he loaded his family into the 
car and set out on a long country trip. The 
machine boomed ahead in great shape. All of 
the things one has to do in managing an auto¬ 
mobile had become as habits with Jones; he 
found that he could even talk to his wife and 
miss a telegraph pole at the same time. 

Suddenly, in the midst of a stretch of sandy 
road, strange noises were heard within the re¬ 
cesses of Jones’ car. It sputtered, gasped and 
died. We need not recount here the painful 
details of the next half-hour. Jones shoved 
the starter button, he shoved the clutch pedal, 
he even shoved the brakes. He peered anx¬ 
iously under the hood. The engine was still 
there and appeared in good health; but the car 
was a fixture. Some time later, Jones was 
towed into the garage where he told his 


MACHINE AND DRIVER 


3 


troubles to a competent-looking person in over¬ 
alls. That individual poked around the ma¬ 
chine for a few minutes, announced that the 
carburetor was out of adjustment, gave a turn 
or two to a screw or two, stepped on the starter 
button and away went the car. 

From all of which, Jones had learned a les¬ 
son, useful even to you and me. Driving an 
automobile is in the first instance a mental 
operation, and, to achieve it, the mind of the 
driver must be working efficiently. He must 
know what buttons to press, and how to push 
a pedal and work a lever coordinately, not for¬ 
getting, meanwhile, to steer. But the best 
driver in the world can’t drive an automobile 
that is out of order or out of adjustment. Not 
only must the driver’s mental processes be 
working efficiently, but also the machine itself 
which he is to drive must be physically right . 

The human body and the human mind, 
which taken together make the man, may be 
likened unto the automobile and its driver. We 
are hearing much these days about mind cul¬ 
ture and mental efficiency. These are good; 
they are indispensable; but they will not 
achieve success unless they operate in a body 


4 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


machine that is in correct adjustment. Mental 
efficiency can be built up only on a solid phys¬ 
ical foundation. 

It is a fact not commonly appreciated that 
the brain, in which the mind and all its pro¬ 
cesses have their seat, is a part of the body. The 
brain produces thought, but the brain is a phys¬ 
ical thing, most intimately connected and 
closely tied up with every part of the physical 
body. That body nourishes and sustains it; and 
the brain processes are absolutely limited by 
bodily condition. You can’t get your brain 
right, nor your thought processes efficient, nor 
your mental life on high levels in a body that is 
out of order, or functioning badly. The brain 
worker must build upon his body as a founda¬ 
tion, and this foundation must be solid. This is 
what Elbert Hubbard meant when he said, 
“The first requisite is to be a good animal. ,, 

Your body is a machine; a wonderful ma¬ 
chine; wonderful beyond comparison even with 
the finest automobile, but like the finest auto¬ 
mobile, all the parts are nicely adjusted to act 
in unity. The more we study the human body, 
through the use of modern methods and of in¬ 
struments for scientific research, the more we 


MACHINE AND DRIVER 


5 


learn of its structure and action, the more we 
realize how much more nearly perfect it is than 
any man-made machine can ever be. The hu¬ 
man machine is made to run in perfect adjust¬ 
ment, which means good health. 

How are we to get this perfect adjustment, 
this exuberant good health with its abundance 
of physical animal force, and its abundance of 
nerve and brain power? After you have 
searched the world over for the “open sesame” 
to the kingdom of health, after you have delved 
through the archives of ancient wisdom and 
have exhausted the skill of modern specialists, 
you will find that there is but one answer to this 
all-important question. Take the right care of 
the physical machine. It is the only logical 
answer. Any plan of health building and brain 
building that ignores this fundamental basis 
is doomed to failure. 

The most important concern of your life is so 
to order the program of your physical routine 
that the physical machine is kept in proper ad¬ 
justment. Your personal problem is to learn 
how to take care of your machine, how to keep 
it running smoothly and easily, how to take 
care of it so that every part will be able to per- 


6 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


form its normal work in a normal way. Usu¬ 
ally neglected by the average person, this must 
become a main concern if you are going to get 
the most out of the machine you drive; if you 
are going to keep it out of the junk heap; if 
you are going to send it over the hills easily; if 
you are going to use your mental and physical 
powers to the best advantage. 

We are living in a strenuous time and in a 
country where things move with speed. It may 
be questioned whether the present-day, high- 
tension, “do it now” life of America is in all 
ways most wholesome; but it isn’t in our power 
to change it. To “take it on high” seems nec¬ 
essary for the typical American of to-day. 
We hope in the pages to follow to give our 
readers some pertinent information as to how 
to “take it on high,” and do it easily. 


CHAPTER II 


THE PHYSICAL MACHINE 

The other day I dropped into an automo¬ 
bile sales room. There I saw the latest model 
of one of the best automobiles made; the last 
word in automotive engineering. The machine 
was built on long straight lines and, though 
heavy, was constructed to utilize to the last unit 
the power generated by the motor. The sales¬ 
man started the engine. How quietly and 
evenly the motor generated the energy which, 
when carried to the drive-wheels, would take 
the car and its passengers easily over the high¬ 
est hills. As I stood there listening to the purr 
of the powerful motor I couldn’t help think¬ 
ing, “Marvelous as it is, it can not compare 
with the human machine.” Yet in many ways 
the two are similar. 

As the salesman explained the construction 
and the operation of the various parts of this 
wonderful piece of mechanism I was surprised 
to learn how much there really is to know about 
7 


8 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the automobile; how much brain work has ac¬ 
tually gone into its construction. And I 
thought to myself, “How much this salesman 
knows about this machine he is selling; I won¬ 
der if he and the other salesmen standing about 
know half as much about their own bodies.” As 
I looked the men over carefully, I noticed one 
who was overweight, another, underweight; 
one had a suspicious puffiness under his eyes, 
another had an eruption on his face, and still 
another had a slight rheumatic limp. When I 
observed some evidence of disease in almost 
every salesman, I was sure that not a single 
man knew as much about his own complex 
physical machine as he did about the automo¬ 
bile he was selling. The salesman explained 
the improved carburetor in which the gasoline 
is vaporized, then mixed with just the right 
proportion of air at the right temperature, 
soon to be carried on to the cylinders where it is 
compressed and burned to furnish the power. 
The human stomach is not unlike the carbu¬ 
retor, or at least that part of the carburetor 
which first handles the gasoline and prepares 
it for combustion. The carburetor is at its best 
when it is not flooded with gasoline; similarly, 


THE PHYSICAL MACHINE 9 


the human stomach does its best work when it 
is not overloaded with food. Too much gaso¬ 
line in the carburetor, the salesman told me, re¬ 
sults in too rich a mixture, which cuts down the 
power and damages the motor. I could have 
told him that in the same way too much food in 
the stomach impedes digestion and prevents 
the normal amount of digested food from go¬ 
ing to the tissues. It is easy to get too rich a 
mixture in the human stomach. Weakness and 
lack of endurance are the results. 

The prospective customer standing near 
asked the salesman how many miles the ma¬ 
chine would run for each gallon of gasoline. 
The salesman said, “With the curburetor care¬ 
fully adjusted so that there is no waste of fuel, 
you can usually get nine miles to the gallon. 
But of course if the carburetor is ‘off,’ and 
takes too much gasoline, you will have consid¬ 
erably less power and you won’t go nearly so 
far to each gallon. And, too, if you have too 
rich a mixture, your spark plugs get dirty, the 
cylinders choked with carbon, and the machine 
will run badly.” 

This brought to my mind a man who had 
called at my office the day before, weak and 


10 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


run down, suffering from auto-intoxication, 
his urine filled with indican and uric acid. He 
was stuffing in three big meals a day in an 
effort to get strong. I cut his heavy food al¬ 
lowance in two, arranged his diet so that what 
he ate would not poison him, so that the big 
load would be taken off his stomach and his 
digestion built up. 

Our lungs correspond to the air side of the 
carburetor; they furnish air for the human ma¬ 
chine. And the blood, as it carries oxygen and 
food materials in its vital stream to all the tis¬ 
sues of the body, is not unlike the stream of 
mixed air and vaporized gasoline going out 
from the carburetor through the manifold into 
the cylinders. In the next chapter we show how 
the tissues take oxygen and food materials 
from the blood and burn them, just as the air 
and gasoline are sucked into the cylinders of 
the motor, there to be compressed and burned. 
The same process is taking place in our bodies 
as in the automobile cylinders; heat and energy 
are produced and the waste product is the same 
in both cases—carbon dioxide. 

As I was further examining this beautiful 
machine, I overheard the salesman explaining 


THE PHYSICAL MACHINE 11 


the matter of ignition to a man who evidently 
knew very little about automobiles. The sales¬ 
man told him how the electric current travels 
from the battery, out over the wires to the cyl¬ 
inders; and how, just at the right time, as the 
mixture reaches its maximum compression, the 
current jumps from one side of the spark plug 
to the other, and produces the spark which ig¬ 
nites the mixture. Then comes the explosion 
which generates the power. How important 
this little spark! In the same way, how impor¬ 
tant the nerve impulses flashing from the mil-’ 
lions of little spinal batteries out across the 
multitude of tiny nerve fibers to the muscle 
cells; and there, quicker than thought itself, 
causing the combustion of food materials to 
generate energy to raise your arm, or your leg, 
to contract the walls of your stomach, to digest 
your food; energy that, without any effort on 
your part, produces, night and day, the regu¬ 
lar pulsations of the heart upon which life it¬ 
self depends. No man-made storage battery 
and intricate electrical wiring can compare 
with the human nervous system. 

The muscles of the body correspond to the 
cylinders of the car. Here the food is burned 


12 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


and the power generated. And this brings up 
one difference between the automobile and the 
human machine. In the latter food is burned 
also in the brain cells, where it generates brain 
energy, the most important energy of all. In 
speaking of the ignition, we mentioned that a 
little spark jumped from one side of the spark 
plug to the other at just a certain time. In 
fact, the timing device on the automobile regu¬ 
lates the many thousand explosions the minute 
so that each explosion comes at the right time 
to add its maximum of power toward turning 
the drive shaft that runs the machine. In the 
human body we have the cerebellum which co¬ 
ordinates the muscular movements. All im¬ 
pulses passing to the muscles are regulated by 
this portion of the brain in such a way that the 
several thousand muscle fibers which enable 
you to move an arm or leg, or to breathe, or 
your heart to pulsate, contract in rhythm so 
that the movement is smooth and effective. 
The child, as it totters about learning to walk, 
is educating his cerebellum to the proper co¬ 
ordination of muscular movement. 

The exhaust pipe from the motor corre¬ 
sponds to the kidneys, skin and bowels, the or- 


THE PHYSICAL MACHINE 13 


gans of elimination. This spring, as the 
weather warmed up, my car developed a real 
attack of spring fever. I had trouble in get¬ 
ting it started in the morning. It wouldn’t 
take even the lowest of hills without considera¬ 
ble effort. The engine “died” while running 
slowly and was lazy about picking up speed. 
Finally, when the mechanic looked it over he 
said, “Your outlet valves are badly choked 
with carbon. In fact, two or three of them are 
standing open. The rich mixture you have 
been carrying all winter is too heavy for the 
warm weather; the motor can’t burn it and the 
carbon is deposited in the outlet valves. You 
will have to have these valves cleaned up and 
the carbon burned out of the motor.” And I 
thought of the man who continues his winter 
diet over into warm weather; who overworks 
his kidneys and his liver, and has constipation 
and sluggish skin action; all as a result of too 
much heavy food in warm weather. 

Nature has equipped our human machine 
with a radiator. When the body motor, the 
muscles, are working unusually hard, and an 
excess of heat is generated, this surplus heat is 
carried by the blood to the skin, just as in the 


14 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


cooling system of the automobile the heat is 
carried by the water to the radiator. In both 
instances the heat is dispelled into the air; the 
blood and the water are cooled, and the muscles 
and the cylinders are thereby kept cool. In the 
body cooling system, when an excessive 
amount of heat is generated from within, the 
tiny blood-vessels of the skin dilate, that the 
blood may flow to the outside of the body in 
larger quantities to give up its heat to the sur¬ 
rounding air. Futhermore, when the inside 
heat becomes excessive, this cooling of the 
blood is accelerated by means of the perspira¬ 
tion. When necessary, the mouths of the mil¬ 
lions of tiny pores in the skin open and flood 
the skin with perspiration. As this evaporates 
the skin is cooled much more rapidly. This 
body radiator is under the control of the invol¬ 
untary nervous system; it works automatically 
and at all times to meet the needs of the body. 

The salesman waited till the last to tell us 
the most disagreeable part—the price. But he 
took out some of the sting by explaining that 
this price entitled the purchaser to a regular 
monthly examination of the machine for one 


THE PHYSICAL MACHINE 15 


year, and also to whatever adjustments might 
be found necessary. He said that the company 
insisted upon this examination; that some 
small part might get out of adjustment which, 
if not remedied, would ruin the motor; further¬ 
more that, after the first year, they urged all 
purchasers to have their machines examined 
regularly each month. Then I thought, “How 
much more important, how much more intri¬ 
cate is the human machine, yet how many peo¬ 
ple think of having it examined regularly to 
see that everything is in good running order?” 
The great number of deaths during the prime 
of life could be lessened if the human machine 
were inspected even yearly. And if it were in¬ 
spected monthly, enough money to build two 
Panama Canals could be saved every year in 
avoiding preventable diseases. When a man 
pays six thousand dollars for a high-grade au¬ 
tomobile, he feels that five or ten dollars a 
month is well spent on a regular inspection, yet 
his body-brain machine, earning for him ten 
thousand dollars a year, is not worth even a 
regular yearly inspection. 

Old Dame Nature, manufacturer of the 


16 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


body machine, differs a little from the motor¬ 
car builder in her method of doing business. 
She delivers her machine to its owner free of 
charge; but if the inspections and adjustments 
are neglected, she presents a bigger bill at the 
last—and she always exacts payment. 

So when you come to think it over, there is a 
striking similarity between the automobile and 
the human machine, both in construction and 
mode of operation. But the human machine is 
so much more intricately built, capable of so 
much greater things, that upon close study the 
finest automobile appears by comparison but 
a crude device. The body, moreover, is a self- 
adjusting, self-regulating machine. It can 
adapt itself to a wide range of temperatures 
and climates; to varying conditions of work 
and rest; and, in a measure, to either bad or 
good food. It learns to keep in order, as 
sure in the tropical jungles as in the most 
healthful environment. This self-adjusting 
feature of the body machine tends to make us 
abuse it, to neglect the periodical inspections to 
which it is entitled. And if we do neglect 
them, eventually we shall have to pay a price 
that is appalling. 


CHAPTER III 


YOUR FUEL AND YOUR FORCE 

Your body is built, kept in repair and run¬ 
ning, on what you eat. Your body really is 
what you eat; what it can do depends upon 
your food. If you are out for efficiency, get 
away from the old-time idea that you should 
“eat what you want.” It is important that you 
take into the body good building material. It 
is doubly important that your food furnish 
abundance of the right fuel. Do this so that 
you may keep your marvelous machine run¬ 
ning easily and at its best. 

I was talking the other day with a patient, 
a man who builds sky-scrapers. He told me 
that every piece of material that enters into the 
construction of these wonderful buildings is 
thoroughly tested. The concrete, buried many 
feet under ground and supporting the steel 
framework, is made to withstand at least 
double the tremendous weight and strain, def¬ 
initely and mathematically determined before- 
17 


18 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


band. He told me that the steel girders, 
whether the massive pieces below or the lighter 
ones above, are made of selected material care¬ 
fully manufactured to withstand much more 
strain than that which the engineers have com¬ 
puted to be probable. Even the cement in 
floors and in walls must come up to a certain 
standard of endurance. Nothing is left to 
chance; every bolt and rivet must carry its part 
of the load. There must be no weak spot. 

It is far more important to build good hu¬ 
man bodies than good sky-scrapers. And yet, 
how carelessly we select the materials which go 
into the construction of this wonderful body 
edifice. This carelessness prevails from the 
time the babe makes its entrance into the world, 
until disease, or premature old age, brings 
about the final exit. Even though during the 
last few years we have not been losing, as for¬ 
merly, one-third of all of our babies—largely 
from wrong feeding—there is still room for 
vast improvement. If you have any doubt as 
to whether the older children are being fed 
properly, visit the lunch rooms in the neighbor¬ 
hood of any city school and see the pie, pastry 
and other flimsy building material that the 


FUEL AND FORCE 


19 


children are taking into their stomachs. Every 
year our government spends millions of dollars 
in agricultural colleges to teach methods of 
feeding pigs, calves and colts so that they will 
make good hogs, cows and horses; and it 
spends millions more in spreading broadcast 
this dollar-producing knowledge; but it doesn’t 
spend one-tenth this amount in teaching how 
to feed boys and girls so that they may make 
strong men and women. 

It is just as important for the adult as it is 
for the child to select carefully what is going 
into the structure of the body. Through life 
the tissues are constantly being torn down and 
rebuilt. The body tissues are completely re¬ 
newed every seven years; we should see to it 
that the rebuilding material is of the best. As 
our muscles and bones wear out, they must be 
replaced, as far as possible, with muscles and 
bones as good as we had during youth. As the 
various glands and parts of the nervous system 
change gradually from year to year, they 
ought to be replaced with others just as good. 
Your body must be well constructed. 

And now we come to the matter of fuel for 
this wonderful machine. Food, as fuel in the 


20 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


body, lias a threefold function. First, it keeps 
the body warm. Second, it supplies the energy 
required for muscular effort. Third, it gener¬ 
ates the current of what we call brain-power, 
that rare vital product that distinguishes man 
from all other machines and all other animals. 
Did you ever stop to think that no man-made 
machine can compare with this human machine 
in the wonders that it performs? This marvel¬ 
ous mechanism takes your breakfast bacon, 
eggs and toast, and actually burns them in the 
body furnace, to keep you warm. Of course, 
it is true that, in these days of apartments and 
offices with summer temperature the year 
around, we do not need nearly the amount of 
heat we did when we lived out-of-doors, or 
when dwellings were not kept at blood heat 
during cold weather. Nevertheless, the body- 
heating function of food is and always will be 
essential. 

Again, the bacon, eggs and toast that you 
eat for breakfast are taken by the machine and 
converted into muscular energy. Though in 
this era of machinery the average man needs 
far less food to keep up his muscular strength 
than he did years ago when everything was 


FUEL AND FORCE 


21 


done by hand or foot, yet no artificial mechan¬ 
ism will ever relieve him of the necessity of 
turning some of his body fuel into muscular 
energy. 

The supreme function of the body furnace, 
however, is the conversion of the body fuel into 
brain energy. What a marvel it is that the 
body can take the bacon and toast and turn 
them into energy that enables you to think, 
plan, devise, direct and work intelligently! 

There are plenty of man-made machines that 
convert their fuel into energy; there are plenty 
of plants that transform their fuel into heat; 
but there never was and there never will be a 
machine, except the human body, that will gen¬ 
erate from its fuel brain energy—energy that 
will direct a business and make a success of it, 
that will run a government and shape the des¬ 
tinies of a people. Moreover, while the body 
may be kept warm with inferior fuel, while the 
muscles may function on almost any sort of 
diet, if you expect to have an abundance of 
good brain energy, you must have the right 
fuel. More than anything else, brain energy 
depends upon food. What you put into your 
stomach determines the output of your brain. 


22 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


It is a fact that the food fuel is burned in the 
body almost identically as coal is burned in the 
fire-box under the boiler, or gasoline is burned 
in an automobile engine. In the furnace, the 
oxygen of the air is taken in through the draft. 
It is united with the coal, which is carbon, with 
the result that carbon dioxide is thrown off and 
heat is produced. The same is true of the gaso¬ 
line engine; the right mixture of air and vapor¬ 
ized gasoline (gasoline is also carbon in an¬ 
other form) is sucked into the cylinders 
through the carburetor; here, the mixture is 
compressed, ignited by the spark and burned 
instantly; carbon dioxide is formed and energy, 
in the form of power and heat, is generated. 

This is the same chemical process that takes 
place when food is burned in the body. The 
principal fuels of the body are carbonaceous 
foods, carbon in the same way that coal and 
gasoline are carbons except in a different form. 
The digested carbonaceous foods are taken 
from the blood by the tissues; likewise, the 
oxygen is taken from the red cells of the blood. 
Then the tissues effect a chemical union of the 
oxygen and the carbon, whereby energy is de¬ 
veloped. In other words, the fuel is burned. 


FUEL AND FORCE 


23 


carbon dioxide, the inert waste, is formed, and 
heat, muscular energy or brain energy, is gen¬ 
erated. 

It seems strange that so little thought has 
been given to the matter of fuel for the body 
machine. The superintendent of a big power 
plant once told me that he knew just how much 
electric energy went out over the wires for 
every ton of coal that was fed under the boilers, 
provided, of course, that the coal was up to the 
standard quality. He also stated that when 
the coal was poor, whether it was difficult to 
burn or whether it contained fewer heat units, 
the output of power was always reduced; the 
power plant worked harder but generated less 
energy. Does any one ever stop to think that 
when a man’s efficiency is low the fuel food is 
at fault? The human machine is far more sus¬ 
ceptible to poor fuel than any man-made power 
plant. Yet when a man is low in efficiency we 
rarely stop to ask whether or not he has taken 
the right sort of fuel into his machine. 

Our government buys thousands of tons of 
coal every year for the navy. Uncle Sam puts 
into his battle-ships the latest and most power¬ 
ful engines that science and skill have pro- 


24 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


duced. Carefully he selects the fuel for he 
takes no chance of damaging these expensive 
engines with inferior coal. 

Colorado mines supply part of the coal for 
the navy. In Denver there is a testing plant 
where every carload of coal that is shipped to 
the seaports for the navy is carefully tested. 
The coal must be easily burnable and it must 
liberate a large amount of energy. 

In a trial trip of one of our large battle¬ 
ships, the government required that the vessel 
should show a certain minimum speed, and the 
builders were to receive, in addition to the con¬ 
tract price, a large bonus for every mile per 
hour which the vessel would make in excess of 
this requirement. On this momentous occa¬ 
sion, trained pilots were directing the course of 
the vessel, trained engineers had the throbbing 
engines under control, striving to put the last 
ounce of power into the propellers. But down 
in the hold, in the boiler room, the builders of 
the boat were personally supervising the feed¬ 
ing of the fuel into the giant boilers, the fuel 
which was to speed the ship to the point where 
they would win the bonus. Every lump of coal 
had been inspected carefully before being put 


FUEL AND FORCE 


25 


into the bunkers; and now the stokers, stripped 
to the waist, their sweating bodies shining in 
the glare, were carefully feeding into the huge 
furnaces every lump of coal. In this critical 
moment everything depended upon the fuel. 

How about the man who lives under the high 
pressure of modern life, striving to do his best 
every day, who is making every effort to “take 
it on high”? Does he ever stop to think that 
coffee and pie, fried foods and fresh bread are 
hard to burn, and will clog up his furnace with 
clinkers and cinders? Does he ever stop to 
think that there are many other foods to take 
their places that will furnish far more energy 
and put much more power into his machine? 

There is a direct relation between your food 
and your health, between your food and your 
efficiency, between what you eat and what you 
do, between your fuel and your force. If you 
are going to be just an ordinary man, just a 
mediocre machine, ordinary fuel will do, but in 
these times of keen competition, when it is the 
brain energy that counts, and when it is the last 
ounce of power that you can crowd into your 
machine that really takes you over the top, 
your machine must have hand-picked fuel. 


CHAPTER IV 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 

I had run my new car about a thousand 
miles, when I began to notice that on cold 
mornings the engine would hesitate before 
starting; and when it did start, it would sputter 
and miss and object for several minutes. It 
was not taking the hills as it should; the other 
fellows, even the little ones, were passing me 
on the long grades. And it got so it didn’t run 
smoothly even on level ground; the motor fre¬ 
quently missed, and when I got into sandy 
roads it would knock and balk. From day to 
day I could notice a decided decrease in its 
power, until I began to think that the wonder¬ 
ful description in the beautiful catalogue was 
about as nearly true as the average oil stock 
prospectus, and that the eloquent salesman was 
only another bunco-man. 

Finally I drove around to the agency and 
told my troubles. They sent the tester out with 
26 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 27 


me, a bright young fellow with a keen eye and 
an alert ear. I had driven him but a block when 
he said, “There is nothing to it; it is simply 
your carburetor out of adjustment; you are 
getting too rich a mixture.” And he explained 
that too much gasoline in the mixture means 
too much fuel in the cylinders, and that this 
prevents the proper combustion; that, under 
these conditions, only a very small part of the 
fuel is burned. The result is that not only much 
of the high-priced gasoline is wasted, but on 
account of the small amount that is actually 
burned, the power is greatly decreased. He 
further explained that these are really minor 
considerations compared with the damage that 
results to the motor when the partly burned 
fuel in the form of carbon is deposited around 
the valves and in the cylinders. After a few 
minutes of turning of screws and trying out, 
I had a practical demonstration of the fact that 
the power depends entirely upon the fuel. Too 
much fuel is worse than too little; when too 
much fuel is used and not all is burned, a 
correspondingly small amount of power is gen¬ 
erated. But this wasn’t all. Even yet my motor 
didn’t behave properly; it didn’t sing with its 


28 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


natural purr until the head was taken off and 
the valves and cylinders were cleaned of the 
carbon that had so rapidly accumulated as a re¬ 
sult of the excess of fuel. 

This experience made me think about similar 
troubles with the human machine. What about 
the body carburetor? Does the human system 
ever get too rich a mixture? My experience 
with my patients demonstrates more conclu¬ 
sively every year the evils of overeating. A 
number of years ago a keen observer said, “The 
American people dig their graves with their 
teeth. ,, Many eminent medical authorities 
maintain that a good percentage of all human 
ills is either the direct or indirect result of what 
goes into the stomach. Doctor William Osier, 
the world-renowned physician, says, “The plat¬ 
ter kills more than the sword.” And this de¬ 
struction is as great among the poor as among 
the rich; in the country as in the town. 

An alarming fact that becomes more and 
more apparent to the physician who investi¬ 
gates the matter carefully is the important part 
which the popular manner of eating plays in 
the prevalence of disease. A majority of all 
the people who consult doctors are suffering 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 29 


from some sort of digestive trouble—“dyspep¬ 
sia is our natural ill.” These digestive disturb¬ 
ances are due in large part to habits of eating 
that upset the natural rhythm of the digestive 
organs and hinder normal digestive process. 
Then, we have a large number of disorders due 
to defective elimination, to poisoning, usually 
from undigested, unused food which is retained 
in the system. Even the germ diseases attack 
more readily the large number of persons 
whose digestion is just a little off, whose nutri¬ 
tion is under par, and whose natural defenses 
are below the normal disease-resisting point. 

Not only is much of what we commonly 
recognize as disease due to wrong eating, but 
much of the inefficiency, which is, in reality, a 
form of disease, is likewise due to the same bad 
habit. Just as too rich a mixture cuts down the 
power of the automobile motor, so too much 
food prevents digestion. In this way, over¬ 
eating, or eating foods that are hard to digest, 
actually reduces the amount of food which is 
assimilated into the blood and into the tissues. 
Again we insist, this cuts down the power of 
the human machine, reduces the physical en- 
ergy, the nerve and brain energy, and so in- 


30 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


terferes with efficiency. Not only does over¬ 
eating reduce the fuel supply to your brain 
and to your muscles, but, what is more harm¬ 
ful, too much food results in food poisoning. 
Food 'poisoning is one of the greatest ills of 
the human race! 

Furthermore, bad dietetic habits decrease 
your physical and mental working power by 
overtaxing your nerve force. Overeating con¬ 
verts the human machine into what the engi¬ 
neer calls an engine of low efficiency. It is a 
fact that nerve energy is required to carry on 
digestion, to prepare our foods for use by the 
body. That is why you often get sleepy after a 
full meal; why you feel logy on Monday morn¬ 
ing after the big Sunday dinner. Every par¬ 
ticle of food you eat in excess of what you ac¬ 
tually need taxes your nervous system to a 
certain degree, and robs you of nerve force that 
you might be using in your business or pro¬ 
fession. 

The other morning in the operating-room 
of one of our busy hospitals, while we were 
waiting for the patient to go under the anes¬ 
thetic, the conversation turned to the matter of 
breakfast. The surgeon, who is one of the 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 31 


busiest men as well as one of the most skilful 
in the West, said, “I have eight operations to 
do this morning, and I took the breakfast that 
I always do when I have an extra heavy day 
before me, a glass of malted milk.” A well- 
known lyceum lecturer told me that he never 
ate heartily within several hours before going 
on the platform. Pie said, “On an empty stom¬ 
ach I can thrill my audience easily; I can carry 
them to the heights; but on a full stomach I 
lose my grip on my listeners.” One of the 
brightest men I ever met, considered the best 
salesman of a large sales force of one of our 
great corporations, told me that whenever he 
had an unusually big order to land he always 
ate little the preceding day, and a light break¬ 
fast on the same day; that the added nerve 
force helped him “to land the big ones” where 
other men often failed. 

The first locomotive ever built could gener¬ 
ate only enough power to move itself. Do you 
know any men like that? The first aeroplanes 
could not lift themselves off the ground, to 
say nothing of carrying passengers or freight. 
Likewise, the early automobile had hardly 
more than enough power to overcome its own 


32 


TAKING IT ON PUGH 


inertia. Inefficient machines, all of them, our 
engineers would say, and still, to-day, how 
many men are there—and women, too—who 
are failures because so much of their nerve 
force is consumed in digesting surplus food? 
Are you one of those who can do but little more 
than push a knife and fork? 

You remember the mechanic told us that too 
rich a mixture, too much fuel, actually dam¬ 
ages the motor by causing a deposit of un¬ 
burned fuel, carbon, in various parts. In the 
same way, too much food not only cuts down 
the power of the human machine, as we have 
shown, but it injures the machinery by causing 
an accumulation of waste material. Too much 
food, or food that is hard to digest, brings 
about food poisoning—not food poisoning as 
we usually think of it, due to taking foods that 
are spoiled before they are eaten, but food 
poisoning from foods that spoil after they are 
eaten . 

If you were to place on your tongue a piece 
of potassium cyanide the size of a pea you 
would be dead in fifteen seconds. This is what 
we mean by death by poisoning. A poison is 
any substance which, by affecting the blood 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 33 


or the tissues of the body, may produce death 
or serious bodily harm. Another poison, which 
acts in a different way from potassium cya¬ 
nide, is strychnine. In sufficient quantities, 
strychnine produces death by paralyzing the 
nerve centers whicli control the vital functions. 
Still another poison acting in a different way 
is phosphorus. Phosphorus causes disintegra¬ 
tion of the muscles and bones, and degenera¬ 
tion of the vital organs, including the heart, 
liver and kidneys. 

The food poisons that we are going to de¬ 
scribe are poisons no less truly than potassium 
cyanide, strychnine and phosphorus; they exert 
a harmful influence upon the body; the only 
difference is a difference of degree and speed 
in their action. Compared with cyanide or 
strychnine, the food poisons are but little 
known; nevertheless, they do a million times 
more injury to the human race than do the 
poisons that kill so speedily. There is more 
than one way to commit suicide. 

We all know that food is prepared for use 
in the body by a process we call digestion; that 
in this process the food is changed chemically 
to other substances which can be readily taken 


34 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


into the blood and carried to every tissue. This 
chemical change in the food during digestion 
is accomplished by means of the digestive 
fluids manufactured by the digestive glands 
and poured into the stomach and intestine. 
These digestive fluids not only digest the 
food, but they prevent putrefaction and de¬ 
composition while digestion is going on. In 
this connection, let us remember that the stom¬ 
ach and intestine are warm and moist, and that 
without the antiseptic effect of the digestive 
juices the food would sour and rot, just as it 
does outside of the body if kept in a warm 
moist place. 

Digestion is the first step in the utilization 
of the food. When digestion fails, what hap¬ 
pens? The food ferments and decomposes just 
as it would do outside of the body under similar 
conditions. During this rotting process chemi¬ 
cal substances which are poisons are formed 
from the food; we term them food poisons. 
These poisons are absorbed into the blood and 
carried to every tissue in the body, where they 
work injury just as do potassium cyanide, 
strychnine and phosphorus, only in a less de¬ 
gree. Thus it is apparent that our food must 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 35 


do one of two tilings—either it must digest and 
nourish us, or it must ferment and decompose 
and poison us. And poisoning from food is 
poisoning just as truly as is poisoning from 
any one of the familiar poisons we have named, 
the only difference being in degree. 

What are the causes for the failure of di¬ 
gestion and the formation of the food poisons? 
The most common is overeating; taking more 
food than the digestive juices can protect from 
fermentation and putrefaction. Just here let 
us remember that in general there is a nice ad¬ 
justment between the digestive capacity and 
the body requirements. As a rule, your di¬ 
gestive apparatus can take care of all the food 
you actually need and a little more—in some 
persons, a great deal more, but usually at least 
a sufficient amount. But, as soon as you begin 
to eat food in excess of what you need, usually 
only a part of it can be digested; the balance 
will ferment and decompose and form the food 
poisons that we are describing. 

It is true that food requirements vary to a 
wide degree. Some persons need much more 
food than others, and the same man may need 
a different amount of food at different times. 


36 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


If you are out-of-doors much of the time in the 
winter, you need more food to keep the body 
warm than in summer. The young person 
whose tissues are active needs more food than 
the old. Large individuals, except those whose 
tissues are composed chiefly of fat, need more 
food than small people. This statement, how¬ 
ever, does not refer to the bloated boys with the 
big bay-windows out in front. Of course the 
man who does physical labor uses up, and 
really needs, considerably more food than the 
man who sits at his desk and does mental work. 
Fortunately, the general rule is that the power 
of digestion is nicely adjusted to these various 
needs of the body. But when you eat in excess 
of these needs, which means in excess of the 
amount that can be taken care of by the di¬ 
gestive fluids, fermentation and decomposition, 
that is to say, suicidal food poisoning, results. 

Overeating is not the only cause of an excess 
of undigested food in the bowels. In fact, any 
factor which makes normal digestion difficult 
or impossible assists in the formation of the 
food poisons. One of the most important of 
these factors is the unhygienic preparation of 
food—bad cooking. Possibly not bad cooking 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 37 


as we commonly recognize it, but bad cooking 
as your stomach recognizes it. For example, 
fried foods are difficult to digest because of the 
fat which is cooked into the balance of the food. 

Again, indiscriminate mixing of foods tends 
to prevent normal digestion. Our foods should 
be simple; a meal should consist of only a few 
kinds of food. The matter of correct food com¬ 
binations is very important, especially for those 
whose digestion is somewhat impaired. When 
you eat grapefruit or other acid fruit together 
with toast you make the digestion of the toast 
more difficult than if the fruit were omitted. 
The reason for this is that starchy foods can be 
digested only in an alkaline medium. An ex¬ 
cess of acid in the meal tends to prevent the 
formation of such a medium, especially in those 
whose digestions are not vigorous. There are 
many other combinations of food mentioned 
later, which every one who wishes to have a per¬ 
fect digestion and hundred per cent, bodily 
efficiency will do well to avoid. 

Still another factor which makes normal di¬ 
gestion difficult and favors the formation of 
food poisons is imperfect mastication. Masti¬ 
cation has three purposes—first, to grind the 


38 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


food into fine particles; second, partly to 
digest the starchy foods; and, third and most 
important, to stimulate the manufacture of all 
the digestive juices throughout the entire di¬ 
gestive tube. In this way, digestion is partly 
under our voluntary control, for which reason 
our food should be chewed thoroughly. A meal 
well masticated is half digested. 

Let us examine the stomach and intestine 
and see just how our food after it is eaten may 
become poison. Suppose you have eaten more 
food than you need; for example, an unusually 
heavy Sunday dinner on a hot day; and then 
suppose you sit around most of that afternoon 
and evening; what happens? If this meal con¬ 
tained fried chicken, fried sweet potatoes, or 
other fried foods; if you have eaten rich sauces, 
puddings, pie or cake; if you have eaten much 
bread or potatoes and with them a salad with 
vinegar, or a fruit salad which prevents the 
easy digestion of the bread and the potatoes— 
if you have committed any of these dietetic 
errors at your Sunday meal, then only a part 
of this meal will be digested. The digestive 
fluids will take care of what they can. The 
fried foods, the pie and the cake, a part of the 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 39 


bread, and a part of the potatoes will be passed 
on into the large intestine half digested. About 
ten or eleven o’clock in the evening this undi¬ 
gested food will begin to ferment and decom¬ 
pose just as it would do if you would put it in 
any warm moist place filled with bacteria. In 
other words, your large intestine becomes a 
garbage can for the food you ate and could 
not digest. 

As the potatoes, the bread, the pie crust and 
the cake of your big Sunday dinner ferment, 
gases and a series of acids and alcohols are 
formed. If all of the meat that you ate was not 
digested, and if after you had already eaten 
enough of other foods, you topped off your 
dinner with a slice of custard pie or a dessert 
with eggs or gelatin in it, then these proteid 
foods will form poisons known as putrins which 
are far more poisonous than those generated 
from the starchy foods just mentioned. From 
the fats are formed the butiric or fatty acids, 
which are also more or less poisonous even in 
small amounts. 

The first thing that these food poisons do is 
to irritate the delicate walls of the stomach and 
the intestines. A burning in the stomach as 


40 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


well as a gnawing sensation when the stomach 
is empty, and the vague discomfort often pres¬ 
ent in that much less sensitive organ, the small 
intestine, are the direct or indirect results of 
the irritation arising from these food poisons. 
Even serious diseases like catarrh of the stom¬ 
ach and bowels may be brought about through 
the constant irritation of the mucous membrane 
by these food poisons. 

Next these food poisons are taken up by the 
blood and carried to the liver, the great poison 
destroyer, which attempts to filter out from the 
general circulation all poisons from the stom¬ 
ach and intestines. The “sluggish liver” is 
simply a liver that has been overworked at the 
task of destroying these food poisons. 

Even though that faithful servant, the liver, 
works hard night and day to keep these poisons 
out of the general blood stream, sooner or later 
a certain proportion of them finds its way to 
every j>art of the body, and slow suicide has 
begun. Let us remember that it takes only 
three minutes after materials enter the blood 
until they reach every tissue and part of the 
system. Once in the system, these food poisons 
do an untold amount of harm. They are the 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 41 


cause, either directly or indirectly, of more 
diseases than all other factors combined. Ner¬ 
vousness, rheumatism, catarrh, malnutrition, 
and anemia are all due in large measure to food 
poisoning. The presence of food poisons in the 
system lowers our natural disease-resisting 
powers against man’s arch enemy, the germ. 
With few exceptions, it is very doubtful if we 
should ever contract any of the germ diseases 
except as our disease-resisting powers become 
lowered through food poisoning. 

This brings us to one of the worst effects of 
food poisoning; an effect that is not commonly 
recognized, namely: Inefficiency. Food poi¬ 
sons really clog the machine and prevent us 
from doing our best work. Food poisons de¬ 
plete the nerve force and rob us of brain en¬ 
ergy. Food poisoning is responsible for more 
failures in life than any other single factor. 
Is this matter of food poisoning merely a the¬ 
ory? By no means. Chemical analysis will 
demonstrate that these toxic products are being 
formed in the bodies of thousands, yes, millions 
of persons; that they are being carried out of 
the body through every possible channel of 
excretion. The body sewers are found loaded 


42 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


with them. In the man who has food poisoning, 
indican is present in the urine, as well as the 
acids from fermenting starchy food combined 
with basic elements from the blood. Chemical 
analysis of the stools of the food-poisoned per¬ 
son will show that they contain all of the food 
poisons. In the same way, even the saliva, the 
sweat, and the secretions of the stomach are 
found to contain food poisons which the body 
is trying to eliminate. 

While the chemist can determine positively 
that food poisons are being formed in the body 
of a person so afflicted, chemical analysis is not 
necessary; there are many signs of this process 
which are familiar to all of us. They are the 
coated tongue, the fetid breath, eructations of 
food or gas, the sour stomach, gas in the bow¬ 
els, and bloating of the abdomen. All of these 
are caused by fermenting and decomposing 
food. If you have one or more of these symp¬ 
toms, you have fermenting and decomposing 
food in the stomach and bowels, and you are 
being poisoned by your food. 

What are the effects upon the system of 
these food poisons? In different persons they 
are widely different; their effects, like those 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 43 


of drugs, are not exactly the same in any two 
persons. In the robust man who constantly 
takes more food than his body can utilize, there 
may be no apparent immediate effects. Just 
as the body may become accustomed to large 
doses of poisonous drugs or alcohol when taken 
constantly, so a person may become accustomed 
to quantities of food poisons. This is particu¬ 
larly true in those who are especially vigorous, 
in whom all of the organs are more than or¬ 
dinarily active. It is true that many persons 
are so constituted that they can overeat, in fact, 
can for a time violate many of nature’s laws 
with seeming impunity. The system becomes 
accustomed to the constant food poisoning, 
much in the same way that it tolerates the 
habitual use of morphine and other poisonous 
drugs. 

While a person may continually generate 
large quantities of food poisons and destroy 
and eliminate them without producing any im¬ 
mediate apparent bad effect, nevertheless there 
is a constant injury attending such a process, 
and the seeming immunity of a certain class of 
robust people to the effects of food poisoning 
sooner or later comes to an end. The truth is 


44 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


that this chronic poisoning of the system grad¬ 
ually wears out the vital organs, hardens the 
arteries, depletes the vital resistance and gets 
the man ready for an incurable chronic disease 
or for sudden death. Early death is the rule 
among this class of people, while among them 
occur nearly all of the sudden deaths. 

A perfectly healthy man does not drop dead 
at fifty, nor is he suddenly attacked by Bright’s 
disease or cancer, neither does he contract 
pneumonia and die in a few hours. Such a per¬ 
son has been food poisoned for probably 
twenty-five years preceding the apoplexy or 
heart failure or Bright’s disease or cancer or 
rapidly fatal pneumonia; and on account of 
this food poisoning his organs have been worn 
out and his vital force has been depleted to the 
point where one of the above mentioned dis¬ 
eases became possible. 

In the majority of persons, and always in 
those not particularly vigorous, food poisoning 
creates more or less immediate disturbance. 
The nature of this disturbance depends upon 
the person’s peculiarities, upon which organ or 
part of his body is below normal and presents 
the point of least resistance. The severity of 


KNIFE AND FORK SUICIDE 45 


,the effects depends upon the amount of food 
poisons and the vulnerability of the person. 

The first effect of the food poisons is upon 
the stomach and bowels. The habits of eating 
that produce food poisons are responsible for 
nearly all of the various disturbances of diges¬ 
tion. Most of the symptoms which we recog¬ 
nize as being due to disordered digestion are 
also positive indications of the manufacture in 
the stomach and bowels of food poisons. 

Furthermore, the irritation to the stomach 
and intestine from the fermentative and putre¬ 
factive processes breaks down the natural dis¬ 
ease-resisting power of these organs and makes 
them easy portals of entry for germs into the 
body. A good percentage of the germ diseases 
originate in the stomach and bowels. The 
germs are able to gain a foothold here on ac¬ 
count of the excess food present, preceding the 
attacks of illness. After the growth and de¬ 
velopment of the germs, by reason of the low¬ 
ered resistance of these organs, they gain ac¬ 
cess to the entire system. 

After the food poisons are absorbed into the 
blood, they affect every part of the body. 
Chronic lassitude or “that tired feeling,” head- 


46 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ache and bilious attacks, nervousness, catarrh, 
rheumatism, and gout are all due to food poi¬ 
sons in the blood. Both general debility and a 
lowered condition of the vital resistance are 
more frequently than otherwise the result of 
chronic food poisoning of the system. And 
just as important, these food poisons cut down 
your working power, especially if you are a 
brain worker; they are the arch enemy of effec¬ 
tive eff ort. 

In building the physical foundation for real 
efficiency, you must avoid food poisoning. The 
man who tries to increase his brain power and 
his efficiency while his physical machine is be¬ 
ing constantly hampered with toxins generated 
from unused food is trying to drive his auto¬ 
mobile up-hill with the brakes on. If you are 
going to “take it on high,” to do your best and 
do it easily, avoid these various causes of food 
toxemia. Don’t commit suicide with your 
knife and fork. 


CHAPTER V 


SELECTING AND PREPARING YOUR FUEL 

Tile human body, unlike the automobile, 
builds itself from within. Like the automobile, 
it operates as a motor, gaining* its energy from 
the burning of food fuel. Food, then, serves 
two functions: it supplies building material 
for the machine itself, and it furnishes fuel to 
propel the machine. No factor of our daily life 
is more important, therefore, than wise selec¬ 
tion and correct preparation of the food which 
is to serve this double function. 

Most people eat what they want; they follow 
the old fallacy that the appetite is the best 
guide; that one needs the foods he likes, and, 
moreover, these are the ones he can digest. In 
this way, the average man abandons the matter 
of food selection to the whims of his cook and 
the dictates of his palate. Is it any wonder 
that as a nation we are unhealthy? Is it any 
wonder that so large a percentage of our 
young men was found in the hour of our 

47 


48 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


greatest need to be unfit? Is it any wonder 
that our death rate during the prime of life is 
doubling? 

This brings us to one of the most important 
matters in connection with eating. If your 
automobile refused to start in the morning, if 
you had considerable difficulty in pulling 
through the sandy stretches of road,—in short, 
if the machine were not working well, you 
wouldn't expect to put it in good order by 
flooding the carburetor with gasoline or by 
forcing an additional amount of fuel into the 
cylinders. Rather, you would have a mechanic 
look it over. He would probably find that the 
ignition was out of order, or that there was dirt 
in the carburetor, or that there was carbon in 
the valves, or that there was some definite dis¬ 
order which assuredly could not be set right by 
merely forcing more fuel into the cylinders. 
Yet, when the average person doesn’t feel well, 
immediately he begins to eat more. He tries 
to force his overworked stomach to take care of 
still more food. He whips it up with a tonic 
in order to force digestion and drive more food 
into the muscles. It is just as irrational for 
the sick or run-down man to try to get strong 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 49 


by eating more as it is to attempt to make the 
disabled automobile run by taking in more 
gasoline. 

“How’s your appetite?” inquires the ailing 
man’s friend. 

“Poor,” he replies. 

“Well, why don’t you take some tonic to 
sharpen it up? You never can get well unless 
you eat.” 

This often-heard popular prescription is 
fundamentally wrong; it puts the cart before 
the horse. An artificially stimulated, appetite 
will cure no bodily ill . 

One of the first rules for that exuberant 
good health which is the basis for the better 
brain power is: When you are sick, dont eat . 
The advanced thinkers of the medical profes¬ 
sion are recognizing that in many diseases this 
is one of the ways to a quick cure. Again, if 
you are near-sick, or dont feel just right, eat 
lightly and continue to eat lightly until you 
feel better . Ninety per cent, of our indisposi¬ 
tions and little ills are either due to indiscre¬ 
tions in diet, or associated so intimately with 
what we eat, that cutting down the food is one 
of the first steps toward relief. It is essential to 


50 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


keep in mind that when the body is disabled 
in any way or from any cause, the amount of 
food assimilated is at once decreased. The body 
forces turn their attention to curing the disease, 
whatever it may be; therefore, eating lightly, 
or eating nothing at all, under such circum¬ 
stances renders nature a great assistance in 
bringing about the cure. Even the animals 
know enough to quit eating when something 
is wrong. Again we say, when you feel had , 
dont eat; when you are a little off, eat lightly . 

The mistake which most persons make in 
their diet is in eating too much heavy food. 
In other w T ords, they eat too much of meat, 
eggs, bread, potatoes, sweets and fats; and 
they do not eat a sufficient amount of fruit and 
vegetables. One of the commonest mistaken 
notions about food is that there is no nourish¬ 
ment in fruit and vegetables, that they contain 
nothing except water and “roughage.” As a 
matter of fact, they contain the valuable tissue 
salts and the vitamines. Without both of these, 
the heavy foods are almost useless; while with 
their assistance, the body takes the heavy foods 
and builds them into the tissues, later burn¬ 
ing them up to form heat and energy. Your 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 51 


diet for every day should include an abundance 
of fruits and vegetables. The people who make 
a habit of eating such foods are in far better 
all-the-year-round health than those who con¬ 
fine themselves largely to heavy foods. Na¬ 
tions that include in their diet large amounts 
of fruit and vegetables are noted for their 
national vigor, energy and disease-resisting 
power. 

The quantity of food you eat is a matter of 
extreme importance. In the previous chapter 
we showed how overeating—our national in¬ 
temperance—results in food poisoning, the 
universal ill. Food poisoning is responsible for 
more disease, more ill-health, more lowered ef¬ 
ficiency, more failures, than any other factor 
and probably all other factors that make for 
disease. How much one should eat depends 
somewhat, of course, on the individual. No 
universal rule can be laid down. While it is 
true that the body is a machine, still, in differ¬ 
ent persons it is subjected to such varying in¬ 
fluences that no machine-made plan of dietetics 
will be successful. 

The idea that every man, woman and child 
should eat a certain number of calories for each 


52 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


unit of body weight is a positive error. In those 
cases where such a plan seems to be beneficial, 
the benefit really results from the improved 
methods of cooking and food selection, rather 
than the caloric measurement feature. 

Under differing conditions the actual need 
for food in the body varies widely. In winter, 
if we are outdoors several hours daily, we need 
much more food than during the summer to 
keep the body warm. The man who works hard 
at muscular work needs much more food than 
the indoor man. Many a business man has 
broken down his system because he persisted in 
subsisting on the heavy diet upon which he was 
raised on the farm. The harvest-hand habit of 
eating has robbed many a man of his chance 
for success in life, and landed him in physical 
bankruptcy at fifty-five. The large man, un¬ 
less his body bulk is principally fat, needs con¬ 
siderably more food than the small man, al¬ 
though as a rule small men eat more than big 
men, with the result that they usually overeat. 
When you are working hard at brain work, 
exhausting your nerve force at some trying 
problem, your digestive capacity is lowered 
and you must temporarily decrease your food. 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 53 


Again, when you are at your best and feeling 
well you can digest considerably more food 
than when you are “just a little off.” 

Nothing in the realm of a man’s physical 
efficiency is more important than the correct 
determination of the quantity of food he eats. 
Nothing means more to him in health, in brain 
power, in real dollars, than the wise handling 
of this part of his physical program. 

Why not follow my appetite? Why not let 
it be the guide as to the quantity of food? Why 
not eat when I am hungry, eat what I want, 
and continue to eat until I am satisfied? We 
are going to show later on how your appetite 
may be a safe guide as to the amount you 
should eat; but it is not a safe guide under all 
circumstances. The reason for this is that most 
persons have overeaten, have followed unnat¬ 
ural habits of eating, until their appetites have 
become abnormal and perverted, until their di¬ 
gestions are deranged, until their call to their 
meals is not a natural one. It would be just as 
logical to tell the man who has drunk whisky 
for twenty years that he can go ahead and 
drink whatever his appetite calls for, as it 
would be to tell the food glutton or intemper- 


54 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ate eater to go ahead and eat what he wants 
and whenever he wants it. 

“That gnawing hunger” when the stomach 
is empty is not by any means a normal appetite. 
It is simply an evidence of digestive disturb¬ 
ance. Like most of the stomach symptoms of 
indigestion, it is relieved temporarily by taking 
food. This gnawing becomes more severe in 
ulcer of the stomach, one of the most dangerous 
of the stomach diseases. Similarly, any distress 
in the stomach, or a headache, or faintness, 
coming several hours after meals, even though 
it is relieved by eating, is not a normal sign 
of hunger or real need of food. On the con¬ 
trary, with normal hunger there is no distress 
or discomfort whatever; the mouth is moist, the 
tongue is clean and pink; and there is rarely a 
craving for any particular food, but a desire 
for almost any good wholesome food. A meal 
eaten in response to normal hunger is followed 
by a sense of physical well-being that is many 
times more pleasureable than the satiety of the 
average so-called good liver. 

As a general rule, two meals a day, with a 
light lunch at noon, are sufficient. Except for 
the man who does hard muscular work, the 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 55 


third meal is superfluous. The average indoor 
man who has a cranky digestion will assimilate 
more food by eating twice daily than by eating 
three times a day, by reason of the added di¬ 
gestive power which the stomach will gain by 
having more rest. Since it is really the food 
you digest rather than what you eat that de¬ 
termines how well you are nourished, you can 
be better fed on two meals a day than on three, 
provided, of course, that you are not doing 
hard muscular work. 

For the man who performs severe physical 
labor, a rather light starchy meal is necessary 
at noon. (See menus in Chapter XXI of 
this book.) If you find with sufficient trial 
that you do not keep to a proper weight on 
two meals a day, then eat a light lunch of ce¬ 
reals or starchy food, as indicated in our menus. 
But for the average indoor man, especially in 
the summer, a lunch of fruit, ice-cream, or a 
glass of malted milk, will be amply sufficient. 
For the man who has difficulty in keeping 
down his weight nothing will be quite as effec¬ 
tive in preventing obesity as to take nothing at 
noon except a pint of water and a twenty- 
minute brisk walk. At first, the light noon 


56 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


lunch may be followed by a faint feeling, but 
it will soon pass off, and give place to a clear 
head, a bright eye, and an energetic afternoon. 

A light lunch at noon not only eliminates 
one superfluous meal, but it takes the drag out 
of the afternoon work. One of the largest 
banking institutions in New York furnishes 
its men a light lunch in the building without 
charge. This eliminates the heavy noon meal, 
and its sequel, the after-lunch Havana. They 
have found this pays; the better afternoon work 
more than makes up for the cost of the lunch. 
Many a man is only “half there” in the after¬ 
noon because he has overtaxed his stomach and 
his nervous system with a noon lunch of in- 
digestibles. If we could have the same con¬ 
viviality, recreation and good fellowship at 
our commercial club lunches and on other simi¬ 
lar occasions, with one-third the amount of 
food, we would be better off*. 

In this connection, remember that what may 
seem to you a light meal when compared with 
what your neighbor eats may in reality be for 
you a heavy one. The high-strung, nervous 
man can’t use up as much food as the phleg¬ 
matic person. The more highly organized we 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 57 


become, the more efficient, the more capable of 
big things, at the same time the more suscep¬ 
tible the body becomes to the treatment that it 
receives, whether good or bad. Poor food and 
bad treatment do far more harm to a highly 
bred race horse than to a draft horse. As we 
develop mentally our bodies need better care. 
This is the price we have to pay for better 
brains. In the latter part of this book we go 
into details in the matter of food selection, tell¬ 
ing you just what to eat at each meal. 

Is it better to eat dinner at noon or at night? 
The body needs a certain amount of food every 
day. The stomach has to prepare this food for 
use. It is far better to take this food so as to 
distribute the stomach's task in preparing it as 
evenly as possible over the twenty-four hours. 
When you eat breakfast at eight o’clock and 
dinner at noon, with a light lunch in the eve¬ 
ning, you are giving the stomach the greater 
part of its work for the twenty-four hours in 
about four or five. By eating dinner at night 
you distribute the stomach work more evenly 
over the twenty-four hours. More than this, 
you are taking your heartiest meal just before 
your longest rest. Experiments upon animals 


58 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


have demonstrated that the stomach does its 
best work when the body and brain are at rest. 
Trying to do good work, especially brain work, 
on a full stomach, results in both poor diges¬ 
tion and poor work. 

There is still another factor in favor of the 
dinner at night. You are busy during the day 
and you can more easily omit the superfluous 
meal at noon or go with only a very light lunch. 
But if you have already eaten a hearty dinner 
at noon, there is a great temptation to eat an¬ 
other dinner at night; two dinners a day often 
cause insomnia, and usually, poor digestion. 
This is particularly true of the man who is 
spending much of his nerve energy in really 
doing things. Two dinners a day mean a worn- 
out digestion, in fact, an early wearing out of 
all of the vital organs. 

Next in importance to selecting your foods 
so as to furnish this wonderful machine with 
the best building material and fuel, and timing 
your meals so as to increase your digestion and 
your working power, comes the matter of the 
preparation of the food. The real purpose of 
cooking is to render our food more easily di¬ 
gested, more nutritious; but much of the mod- 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 59 


ern cooking does just the opposite. Instead of 
real scientific cooking, instead of preparing 
our foods so as to increase their digestibility, 
we make the same mistake as in selecting our 
food; we follow the dictates of our pampered 
palates and the notions of our cooks. 

Scientific cooking, like other things scientific, 
is really very simple. It is not our purpose to 
write a cook book, but we can give here a few 
simple suggestions about cooking which will 
increase the digestibility of the food of the 
average family at least fifty per cent. It is a 
fact that next to overeating our greatest 
national food waste is in our cooking. The 
majority of our cooks are proficient in the art 
of making digestion difficult. For this reason, 
no small part of the food goes through the 
body undigested. Much of the modern cooking 
decreases the digestion of our food and in¬ 
creases our doctor bills. 

All foods should be cooked as simply as pos¬ 
sible. If we were to adopt a general rule that 
no two classes of food, such as meats and vege¬ 
tables, should he cooked together, we should 
go a long way toward reforming the kitchen, 
and relieving the trio of national ills, indiges- 


60 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tion, malnutrition and nerve depletion. Food 
should be seasoned after it is cooked, not dur¬ 
ing the cooking, the only exception being 
such seasonings as paprika, (preferable to pep¬ 
per), onions and mustard, which may be put 
into the food at any time during cooking. Salt, 
however, should never be added until just at 
the completion of the cooking. Every house¬ 
wife knows that salting meat while it is cooking 
makes it tough; even more important, eyery 
housewife should know that salting vegetables 
while they are being cooked tends to abstract 
the most valuable portion of the vegetable, the 
tissue salts. All other seasonings are to be 
added after cooking, not cooked into the food. 

Simplicity in cooking, avoiding mixtures, 
rules out the pastries. Cake and pie take up 
stomach room and stomach strength that ought 
to be given to real food. Cake and pie are a 
waste of good food materials. The ingredients 
which go into these desserts are highly nutri¬ 
tious, but mixing them in the cooking renders 
the various foods indigestible. Instead of eat¬ 
ing pie, have your flour made into hard toast, 
spread with the butter, and eat the fruit 
separately, either cooked or raw, Instead of 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 61 


eating cake, again have the flour made into 
hard toast, spread with the butter, and eat your 
eggs on the toast for breakfast. Omit most of 
the sugar; it is not particularly good food. 
There are many wholesome desserts which can 
be made of gelatin, cream and eggs, mixed to¬ 
gether without cooking, which in reasonable 
servings, will really add to the savor and to the 
nutritive value of the meal. 

Our plan of simplicity in cooking also rules 
out all fried foods. It can he demonstrated 
that when foods of any kind are fried, the tiny 
envelopes that surround the cells become 
soaked with grease. This prevents the diges¬ 
tive juices from penetrating the cell and break¬ 
ing up the food materials, just as effectively 
as oiled paper or an oiled slicker turns the rain. 
Many valuable foods are made indigestible by 
being fried. What we say about fried foods 
applies to all foods that are cooked in grease. 
When meats and potatoes or any other vege¬ 
tables are cooked together, the fats always 
present in the meat juices render the vegetables 
very difficult to digest. Cook your meat by pan 
broiling, or by oven broiling, roasting, stewing 
or boiling. The only exception to this is in the 


62 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


case of bacon, which may be fried; but it should 
always be fried over a slow fire, so the grease 
will not be burned. 

Next to the usual wrong preparation of des¬ 
serts, the popular but erroneous way of cook¬ 
ing vegetables causes more stomach overwork, 
more loss of food materials to the body than 
any other of the prevalent cooking mistakes. 
Vegetables are valuable foods, but, for the 
reasons already given, when fried, or boiled 
with meat or fats, they are rendered very diffi¬ 
cult to digest, often indigestible. Vegetables 
are easiest digested when steam cooked. They 
may, however, be cooked by boiling until 
thoroughly done in as little clear water as pos¬ 
sible. The amount of water used should be 
gaged so that but little is left when the cook¬ 
ing is completed. 

Avoid water-logged vegetables; but, on the 
other hand, do not throw away the water in 
which the vegetables are cooked. 

When potatoes, white or sweet, or beets, are 
boiled, leave the jackets on to prevent the es¬ 
cape of the valuable tissue salts. With other 
vegetables, however, these tissue salts are to be 
saved in the water in which they are cooked; 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL G3 


serve this water with the vegetables; throwing 
it away is like boiling coffee in a large amount 
of water, throwing away the water, and serving 
only the coffee grounds. 

Following our rule regarding the mixing 
of foods, vegetables should not be seasoned 
until the cooking is completed. Then, just be¬ 
fore they are served the seasoning is to he 
added; butter, cream, meat drippings or meat 
broths of any kind, cooking oil or olive oil may 
be used. In this way the vegetables are not 
made more difficult to digest by being cooked 
with the fats. Moreover, the delicate vegetable 
flavor is retained and, when one becomes accus¬ 
tomed to this method of seasoning, he will like 
it even better than the usual way of cooking 
butter, cream and meat juices into the vege¬ 
tables. Bacon and cabbage, or pork and beans 
can be digested by almost any stomach if the 
vegetables and meats are cooked separately 
and mixed after cooking. Incidentally, the 
flavor is even better. 

Bread is supposed to be the staff of life, but 
when we consider the thousands of cases of in¬ 
testinal indigestion due in no small part to 
overeating of half-baked and hastily swallowed 


64 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


bread, we are inclined to think that it would be 
more accurate to call bread the staff of death. 
All breads should be made so that they require 
mastication, because mastication is the first step 
in the digestion of this kind of food. XJnchewed 
bread can be only partly digested; the remain¬ 
ing part is wasted—still worse, cumbers the in¬ 
testinal tract. Bread, moreover, when soaked 
by the digestive juices, should disintegrate or 
separate into fine particles. Furthermore, 
bread should be baked sufficiently to rupture 
the starch granules; otherwise, the starch re¬ 
mains undigested. In the light of these facts 
it is easy to see why much of the bread eaten 
fails to be digested and simply ferments and 
decomposes in the bowels, filling the system 
with toxins. 

One ounce of flour prepared in the form of 
a pancake represents an indigestible half-baked 
mass which means that much food lost to the 
body; and, as a result of the fermentation, more 
or less toxemia. One moon-sized, sour, doughy, 
discouraged pancake can rob a salesman of a 
big order. This same ounce of flour made up 
in a slice of hard toast will be digested easily, 
will furnish the body a full quota of food ma- 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 65 


terial, and will not leave an undigested mass 
in the bowels to form poisons. Ordinary hot 
breads, fresh breads, and breads made with 
sweetening, are sinners no less than the pan¬ 
cake. Bake your bread thoroughly, then chew 
it thoroughly; and it will really deserve its 
time-honored title—the staff of life. In Chap¬ 
ter XXI of this book we are giving some 
bread recipes, which will enable you to make 
good, wholesome bread that will tax your 
stomach but little and nourish your muscles 
well. 

Fruits are valuable foods. Usually they 
should be eaten raw. When fruits are cooked, 
sugar should not be cooked into them, as it 
toughens the fiber in the fruit and tends to 
make it difficult to digest. For the same reason, 
preserves are practically indigestible; while 
jellies also are not easily digested. Cooking a 
large amount of sugar into sour fruits does not 
destroy the acid; it simply covers it up so that 
the tongue doesn’t detect it. A better plan is 
to add sufficient soda to the fruit as it is cook¬ 
ing ; this neutralizes or destroys the acid. Then 
a moderate amount of sugar mixed with the 
fruit after it is cooked will make it just as 


66 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


palatable and more easily digested than when 
cooked in the ordinary way. 

A salad made of raw vegetables should he a 
part of every dinner the year around. In the 
winter the salad may be made of raw cabbage 
and apples and celery, if obtainable. In the 
summer, salad vegetables are abundant; don’t 
neglect to get your share. Salad vegetables 
should be kept in a cool place and, if necessary, 
freshened by being placed in cold water for a 
few minutes before being used. A raw vege¬ 
table salad is a valuable, appetizing and attrac¬ 
tive dish, when the vegetables have been kept 
and prepared in the right way. Even the cu¬ 
cumber, if it is not made flabby by soaking in 
vinegar and salt water, may be easily digested 
by the average stomach. Salads should be 
dressed with salt, paprika, olive oil and a little 
vinegar or lemon-juice. Mayonnaise dressing, 
when made correctly, is quite nourishing, es¬ 
pecially in winter, and, to most persons, quite 
palatable. 

We will add just a few words as to food 
combinations. If you want to make your di¬ 
gestion easy, not only should your food be 
cooked simply, but each meal should be com- 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 67 


posed of only a few kinds of food, and these in 
compatible combinations. If you will avoid 
combining bread and potatoes with your meat, 
or acid fruit with your starchy vegetables and 
bread, your food will be digested much more 
easily. Of course the man with a robust stom¬ 
ach doesn’t notice the extra tax imposed on 
digestion by a complicated meal, but the man 
with an impaired digestion must utilize his 
limited digestive power to the best advantage, 
which means that for one thing he must avoid 
incompatible mixtures of food. 

Instead of having grapefruit or other acid 
fruit with your breakfast when you are also 
eating cereal and toast, use prunes, or figs, or 
pears, which contain very little acid. Instead 
of mixing, in the usual way, meat, potatoes 
and bread at the same dinner, take either the 
potatoes and bread, or the meat. And, when 
you have a potato meal, keep everything sour 
out of that meal; your digestion will be much 
better. In Chapter XXI we give menus which 
suggest combinations of foods that are com¬ 
patible when used together. 

We have discussed the matter of selecting 
the building material and the fuel for this won- 


68 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


derful machine; the advantageous time for 
meals; cooking so as to make the food more 
nutritious; combining the food so as to form 
meals that are easily digested; and now, last 
but not least, comes the important matter of 
mastication. There is no question that nature 
intended us to use our teeth; in the natural 
state, most foods require considerable mastica¬ 
tion. Man is almost the only herbivorous ani¬ 
mal with whom mastication has become a lost 
art. All animals that subsist largely on grains 
chew their food thoroughly. Man, to the detri¬ 
ment of his digestion, grinds his grains artifi¬ 
cially; while much of the balance of his food he 
swallows in masses just sufficiently small to 
avoid choking. Incidentally, pyorrhea and 
most of the serious teeth and gum diseases are 
due to failure to masticate. 

One of the first important functions that 
thorough mastication accomplishes is the right 
selection of the food. People who chew their 
food thoroughly almost invariably avoid rich, 
highly seasoned dishes. You rarely see a per¬ 
son who chews thoroughly eat candy or pastry. 
He prefers plain, nutritious food. In fact, any 
one who will form the habit of thorough mas- 


SELECTING YOUR FUEL 69 

tication will soon leave off the indigestible 
dishes. 

We all know that thorough mastication 
grinds the food into fine particles so that it can 
be easily saturated by the digestive juices. 
Hence, when a meal is well chewed, digestion 
goes on rapidly and easily. On the other hand, 
if you underwork your teeth, you overwork 
your stomach. 

If your food, especially your starchy food, 
remains in the mouth for a sufficient length of 
time its digestion is partly accomplished by the 
action of the saliva. Most of our indigestion is 
starch indigestion; this can be largely avoided 
by keeping the food in the mouth long enough 
to insure an abundant outflow of saliva. 

Thorough mastication also stimulates the 
manufacture of all of the digestive juices. 
When you chew your food well you set to work 
the nerves that control all of the digestive 
glands in the body. In this way, thorough 
mastication insures the digestion of all food. 
This abundant flow of the digestive juices will 
cure most cases of constipation. 

Last but not least, chewing regulates the ap¬ 
petite. Rapid eating is the mother of gluttony. 


70 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


On the other hand, thorough mastication 
brings about a normal sense of satisfaction 
when the stomach is comfortably filled. Chew¬ 
ing your food well tells you when you have had 
enough before you have overeaten. Thorough 
mastication satisfies the appetite nerves in a 
normal way. 

Mastication is the first step toward the di¬ 
gestion of the food. It is the only step under 
our direct control. When it is carried out as 
nature intended, it enables us to improve the 
entire digestion process. It assists us to select 
our food; it gives us a normal sense of satis¬ 
faction when we have had really enough. A 
meal well chewed is half digested. 

How, then, can you get a normal appetite? 
How can you eat all you want? First, select 
your food as we have indicated in the first part 
of this chapter; next, have it cooked right; 
then combine your foods as we have indicated, 
so as to make digestion easy; finally, practise 
thorough mastication. Do these things and 
you can eat all you want; you can be sure that 
you are supplying this wonderful machine 
rightly with building and repair material, with 
brain and muscle fuel. 


CHAPTER VI 


EVERY-DAY POISONS THAT SLOW DOWN YOUR 
MACHINE 

W hat would you think of a man if you saw 
him go around to the back of his car, take off 
the cap from his half-filled gasoline tank, and 
pour in a cup of lubricating oil or a pint of 
water? You would think the man was insane, 
would you not ? And it would be next to insan¬ 
ity to put something into the gasoline which 
would make the motor miss aiid sputter, run 
badly and possibly damage the delicate mech¬ 
anism. Yet every day we see people all around 
us putting things into their stomachs which 
will do far more harm to the body machine than 
could possibly be done by lubricating oil or 
water in the gasoline. And they keep it up, 
day after day, and year after year. The sur¬ 
prising part of it is that when their machine 
begins to miss fire, in looking for the cause 
they never stop to think of the every-day poi¬ 
sons they are taking into their systems. 


71 


72 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


What are these poisons that slow down the 
machine? By far the most destructive are the 
food poisons, or the toxins generated from un¬ 
used, undigested food. Next to food poisons 
come those derived from coffee, tea and to¬ 
bacco. Now that King Alcohol has been de¬ 
throned almost throughout the globe, we 
scarcely need mention alcohol and the various 
other poisons that are found in all alcoholic 
drinks. But a class of poisons that are worthy 
of mention are the soda fountain drinks that 
relieve fatigue and speed you up, only, of 
course, to let you down with a thud later on. 
The “later on” may come during the last two 
hours of the day, or it may come at the age of 
fifty, when you need every ounce of your en- 
ergy, mental and physical, to reach the goal of 
success. 

Last, but not least, of the every-day poisons 
are the drugs of all sorts that people get into 
the chronic habit of taking. Few except physi¬ 
cians, or those interested in the sale of drugs, 
realize the millions of dollars spent every year 
for drugs, and the millions of people who use 
them. Pick up any of our Sunday papers and 
notice the large amount of advertising space 


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73 


that is devoted to extolling the virtues of vari¬ 
ous patent medicines. Somebody foots the bill. 
Patent-medicine ads and the fake testimonials 
are everywhere in evidence. Now, however,\ 
the better magazines refuse these advertise¬ 
ments. I wish that every chronic user of pat¬ 
ent medicine could walk down “Patent Medi¬ 
cine Row,” at Newport, and see the mansions 
that have been built by the venders of patent 
medicines of all sorts. These men are much 
like the mining and oil promoters; when one 
particular bait loses favor wdtli the public, they 
are ready with a new one. 

We shall not dwell at any length here on the 
subject of food poisons, as this matter was fully 
discussed in Chapter IV. We wish merely to 
remind the reader that, in general classification, 
the poisons generated from the decomposition 
of surplus food in the intestine fall in the same 
category with those derived from coffee, to¬ 
bacco and vicious patent medicines. 

On my vacation trip to the coast last year I 
met, in a small store in one of the tourist towns, 
an old patient whose family I had taken care 
of during the early years of my practise. At 
that time, the man was apparently properous 


74 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


—a merchant with a rapidly increasing busi¬ 
ness such as often goes with rapidly growing 
cities. [But it was understood that the man was 
operating on very limited capital; in fact, it 
was common knowledge among his intimate 
business associates that he was stretching his 
small capital out too thin, “doing business on 
a shoe-string,” borrowing from the bank at a 
high rate of interest, to meet the needs of his 
rapidly growing business. And, as it was 
hinted about that he was expanding too rapidly 
for his capital, he became a less desirable risk 
at the bank and the rate of interest was in¬ 
creased, until all the profits of his business 
went to pay the excessive interest. 

Soon the inevitable happened. The man 
failed; he lost everything, even to his beautiful 
home. The man consulted me a number of 
times about his health. He was a rather thin, 
wiry individual, always working on his nerve 
force. He led the strenuous life, and he at¬ 
tributed his frequent attacks of sick headaches, 
his nervousness and his depleted nerve energy, 
to the fact that he was working hard. But after 
going into his case the first time, I knew that 
he was mistaken. The man was drinking six 


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75 


cups of coffee a day! He was conducting his 
health business just as he was conducting 
his commercial business. He said he must have 
his coffee in the morning to speed up, and he 
had to have it at noon to keep up the speed, and 
he needed it again at night to hold up for the 
after-dinner work at the office. He was bor¬ 
rowing nerve energy at one per cent, a month; 
and a few months before the crash came I tided 
him over a breakdown in his health that re¬ 
sulted largely from his use of coffee. 

As I again shook the hand of my friend and 
looked into his face, I couldn’t help but note 
that he had aged twenty years in the past ten. 
The prematurely gray hair, the strained facial 
expression, the lack of luster in his eye told me 
that he was still conducting his health business 
on the one-per-cent.-a-month-interest basis. He 
is still mortgaging to-morrow to speed up a 
little to-day. The business world has ruled him 
out long ago, as it generally does the one-per- 
cent.-a-month man. He is now simply a sales¬ 
man at a very moderate salary. Two of his 
daughters are helping to keep the wolf from 
the door by teaching. 

Coffee may be said to be our national drink. 


76 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Last year the consumption in the United 
States amounted to over a billion pounds and 
this consumption is increasing rapidly from 
year to year. For our population we consume 
a far greater amount of coffee than any other 
civilized country. In this connection it is in¬ 
teresting to note that nervous diseases and sud¬ 
den death from apoplexy and heart failure are 
far more prevalent in the United States than 
elsewhere, and that these disorders are rapidly 
increasing. 

Of course coffee is in no sense a food; it is a 
drug. It is surprising that a drug of this na¬ 
ture should come into universal use. We know 
of no drug so widely used that is capable of 
doing so much harm. As a drug, coffee, just 
like all drugs, has two effects upon the system 
—its direct action, and the reaction. 

The effect of coffee is due largely to the 
caffeine which it contains, although its volatile 
oils also play an important part in producing 
coffee poisoning. The brunt of the injurious 
effects of caffeine is borne by the nervous sys¬ 
tem, the heart and the kidneys. Caffeine is a 
drug used in medicine; it is a powerful stimu¬ 
lant to the nervous system, both to that portion 


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77 


controlling the muscles and to that part which 
carries on intellectual processes. 

The first effect of caffeine upon the nerve 
centers is to whip them into an unusual, injuri¬ 
ous activity. Through one part of the nervous 
system this produces apparently greater mus¬ 
cular strength, often gives a sense of relief 
from fatigue. This overstimulation, however, 
always causes a tremor, or trembling of the 
muscles. In most persons it can be seen only 
upon careful examination, but occasionally it 
is quite apparent. The effect of caffeine upon 
the intellectual centers, like that of all intoxi¬ 
cants, is to give rise to a sense of exhilaration, 
but the reaction, the after effects of caffeine 
are nerve exhaustion, decreased muscular 
power, and mental depression. All these are 
due to the exhaustion of the nerve centers. It 
is a scientific law that action and reaction are 
always equal, but in opposite directions. 

Caffeine affects the heart in much the same 
manner as it does the nerve centers. First, it 
stimulates the heart, whips it up, causing it to 
beat more forcibly. Then, as the effects of the 
drug wear off there is a corresponding heart 
depression; the beat becomes more feeble than 


78 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


normal. Caffeine raises the blood pressure, 
which means that an additional strain is put 
upon every artery in the body. Then, as the 
effects wear off, the blood pressure falls even 
below normal. 

In coffee drinkers much of the injurious 
effect of the caffeine must be borne by the kid¬ 
neys. Caffeine causes congestion of the kid¬ 
neys. In those who are unaccustomed to its use 
this brings about temporarily an increased 
amount of urine. Of course this congestion 
sooner or later weakens the kidneys, then the 
waste materials gradually accumulate in the 
body, and in this way the basis is laid for 
chronic disease of some sort, usually of a seri¬ 
ous character. The muddy complexion of 
many coffee drinkers is caused by weakness of 
the action of the kidneys which permits quanti¬ 
ties of waste material to remain in the system. 
The ultimate effect of kidney congestion is to 
bring about their complete degeneration, 
Bright’s disease. As the amount of coffee con¬ 
sumed in the United States has increased from 
year to year, so there lias been a corresponding 
increase in Bright’s disease. 

The pleasing aroma that welcomes the coffee 


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79 


drinker to the breakfast table and gives him an 
appetite for his bacon and eggs is perfectly 
harmless as a perfume; however, the volatile 
oils which give the coffee this aroma when 
taken into the stomach are decidedly injurious. 
They irritate both the stomach and the bowels. 
In those who have a sensitive stomach this irri¬ 
tation is often so great that the coffee is dis¬ 
continued. The combination of the caffeine 
and the volatile oils causes stomach acidity, 
especially in those of a nervous type. This 
effect is so frequent that the acid stomach 
could almost be called the coffee stomach. The 
irritation from these oils is sufficient to produce 
a laxative effect. Many coffee drinkers find an 
excuse for the morning cup in the fact that 
without it they are constipated. In those whose 
digestive organs are not particularly vigorous 
the irritation from this element of the coffee 
in a few years helps to bring on gastritis or 
catarrh of the intestine. 

Just as in all abuses, the ultimate effect of 
coffee upon the system depends largely upon 
the characteristics of the person and the amount 
of vital force he possesses. Roughly, the coffee 
drinkers, as far as the effect is concerned, may 


80 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


be divided into two great classes. The first of 
these are persons of a nervous temperament. 
In these, coffee affects particularly the nerve 
centers, causing nervousness, insomnia, nervous 
exhaustion, and headaches when the coffee is 
discontinued, and eventually, headaches at any 
time. In persons of this type, coffee in time 
may induce complete nerve exhaustion, loss of 
memory and blunting of the intellect. General 
muscular weakness and heart weakness—the 
coffee heart—is common among this class of 
coffee drinkers. The cold hands and feet are 
frequently due to the “coffee heart.” 

The other class of the coffee drinkers belongs 
to the sanguine and phlegmatic temperaments, 
the apparently robust, hearty persons. In such 
persons, coffee produces no immediately ap¬ 
parent bad effects, but, take note, the price is 
paid, and all at once, instead of on the install¬ 
ment plan. These persons continue coffee un¬ 
der the delusion that it does them no harm. The 
fact is, that the effect of the caffeine is ex¬ 
pended largely upon the arteries, heart and 
kidneys. These organs, being of low irrita¬ 
bility, may be abused for years with little or no 
pain or inconvenience, until death is but a few 


SLOWING DOWN 


81 


months off. In these persons the coffee main¬ 
tains a high blood pressure, causes hardening 
of the arteries, and makes possible early death 
from apoplexy. As a result of stimulating the 
heart every day for years with coffee, the mus¬ 
cles of that organ gradually degenerate, and 
thus chronic coffee drinkers invite sudden 
death from heart failure. 

In the light of these facts showing the vary¬ 
ing influence of coffee upon different persons, 
it is easily to be seen how a man and his wife 
may drink coffee for years—the man because 
“it doesn’t hurt him,” the woman because her 
husband drinks it and he is strong, with the 
result that the man may drop dead at fifty with 
heart failure or apoplexy, while the woman 
may spend thirty of the best years of her life a 
nervous invalid. 

Coffee, even the morning cup, is a one-per- 
cent. mortgage on to-morrow which you can ill 
afford to pay, especially when, in the long run, 
you will have more real nerve energy and 
mental vigor without it. The constant over- 
stimulation day after day from coffee even¬ 
tually robs you of your nerve force and your 
efficiency. Cut it out. It may be one of several 


82 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


things or it may be the one thing that will keep 
you from taking it on high easily. 

What we have said about coffee applies to a 
considerable extent to tea, for the reason that 
caffeine under the name of theine is the element 
which lends the tea its stimulating effect. Tea 
contains from one to three per cent, of caffeine, 
which gives it its bitter taste. This same form 
of caffeine is found in a number of other 
plants, including the cola-nut; it is also related 
to cocaine and theobromine, the latter being 
the stimulating element of cocoa. Tea differs 
from coffee in that it contains a large amount 
of tannin—from twelve to seventeen per cent. 

The tea habit as we usually see it is really 
more injurious than the ordinary use of coffee, 
for the reason that the amount of caffeine in 
tea is so small that the tea drinker, to get suffi¬ 
cient stimulation, is soon induced either to make 
his favorite beverage stronger, or to drink more 
to get stimulation. In this way he soon takes 
into his system large amounts of tannin. Tan¬ 
nin is an astringent, used as such in medicine; 
thus its effect upon the lining of the stomach 
and intestines is materially to decrease the 
amount of the digestive secretions. Hence, tea 


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83 


drinking interferes decidedly with digestion; 
it lowers the digestive capacity, and it is an 
important cause of constipation. In fact, the 
nervous indigestion of the tea drinker, with its 
accompanying constipation and flatulence, so 
frequently seen in women, is due almost en¬ 
tirely to the combined evil effects of the caffe¬ 
ine upon the nervous system, and of the tannin 
upon the organs of digestion. 

Doctor Elmer H. Funk, associate in medi¬ 
cine at the Jefferson Medical College at Phila¬ 
delphia, in one of his latest works tells us that 
tea used in excess affects powerfully the sta¬ 
bility of the motor and vasomotor nerves, af¬ 
fects the action of the heart and the digestive 
functions, producing flatulent dyspepsia, trem¬ 
ulousness of the limbs, pallor of the face and of 
the balance of the surface of the body, irregular 
heart action and feeble pulse, nightmare and 
loss of appetite, headaches, nausea, vomiting, 
and obstinate neuralgia. To this we wish to 
add that for the man or woman who is already 
inclined to be nervous, one cup of tea a day is 
using tea in excess, and in such a person may 
produce the above results to a greater or less 


84 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


degree, depending, of course, upon the vulner¬ 
ability of the person. 

The tobacco habit is among the most wide¬ 
spread and damaging of the health destroy¬ 
ing habits. Tobacco strikes at the vital parts; 
it is in reality a nerve poison. It attacks in¬ 
sidiously the brain and the nervous system, 
that portion of the body which has under 
its control all of the vital parts of our 
body machine. Tobacco subtracts from the 
sum total of your brain energy, the most 
valuable of all your energies. There is not 
a single organ in the body of the tobacco user 
that is wholly exempt from its damaging in¬ 
fluence. Remember that there is not a single 
instance in which tobacco has anything but in¬ 
jurious effects, relatively small as they may be 
in some cases. The man who uses tobacco with¬ 
out apparent harm is doing himself more per¬ 
manent injury than the man who feels the bad 
effects of even one cigar. 

Nicotine, the poisonous element of tobacco, 
is contained in varying amounts in different 
tobaccos; some Havana tobaccos contain only 
one per cent., while other tobaccos contain as 


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85 


much as six per cent. Nicotine is a deadly 
poison. Two drops placed on the tongue of a 
small dog caused death in one minute, while a 
large mastiff dropped dead almost instantly 
when ten drops were placed on his tongue. The 
instant death of a canary was caused by one 
drop being held near its bill. It is a well-known 
fact that one cigar contains sufficient nicotine 
to kill two men. In fact the collapse, nausea, 
diarrhea, weakness, faintness, and lowered ar¬ 
terial pressure following the first cigar furnish 
a good example of nicotine poisoning in the 
man who has not developed toleration for to¬ 
bacco. Tobacco is no longer, as formerly, used 
as a medicine. On account of its varying 
effects on different persons and its not infre¬ 
quent poisonous action, it is considered unsafe 
as a remedy. 

Of course we do not mean to imply that to¬ 
bacco as ordinarily used has such violently poi¬ 
sonous effects upon men. In smoking and 
chewing but a fraction of the total nicotine in 
tobacco is actually received into the system. 
Our contention is that tobacco is a true poison, 
even though mild as ordinarily used, and the 
prudent man—the man who wishes to build 


86 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


his physical life wisely—should not he foolish 
enough to load his system with any continuous 
poison, even though it be relatively mild in 
effect. Furthermore, few persons have a large 
enough fund of vital force that they can afford 
to use up even a part of this margin in an un¬ 
necessary way. When we are considering such 
precious resources as nerve force and vital 
power, who would say that he “has them to 
burn”? 

Nicotine is rapidly absorbed by the skin 
and mucous membrane. It is a nerve poison; 
it affects the nerve centers controlling the vital 
organs and the intellectual centers of the brain. 
Through its action on the nerves of digestion, 
nicotine interferes decidedly with this impor¬ 
tant process, although it may increase the ac¬ 
tivity of the bowels. Nicotine affects the ner¬ 
vous mechanism of the heart in such a way as to 
increase the blood pressure in a few minutes, 
in extreme eases as much as twenty-five points. 
Tlius tobacco using becomes a frequent cause 
for high blood pressure and arterial sclerosis. 
The effect of nicotine upon the brain is one of 
depression. Tobacco is not an intellectual stim¬ 
ulant, it is just the reverse; it interferes with 


SLOWING DOWN 87 

brain work, it cuts down mental energy and 
ambition. 

Just as with most other poisons, the effects 
of tobacco are different in different persons. 
In some, the heart bears the brunt of the poison, 
in others, the digestive organs, while in most 
persons the entire nervous system is more or 
less affected. It follows from this that the per¬ 
sons with a highly irritable nervous system, 
those who are usually the easiest victims of the 
habit, are hurt the most. Naturally, the man 
whose health is below par is hurt more than the 
robust man. Though most persons easily form 
a toleration for tobacco, the nervous man, the 
man who is injured most by its use, usually has 
the greatest difficulty in becoming accustomed 
to it. Nevertheless, a toleration for tobacco 
means in reality that the nervous system is be¬ 
coming deadened to its effect; it means that 
the body’s protector, which protested vigor¬ 
ously at the first smoke or chew, is now per¬ 
mitting a genuine poison to enter the system. 

Except for cigarette smoking, the use of to¬ 
bacco in one form is as injurious as in another. 
The average tobacco user takes sufficient of the 
drug, in whichever form he uses it, to keep him- 


88 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


self under its influence. In the chewing of to¬ 
bacco the nicotine is absorbed into the system 
with greater ease and in larger amounts than 
when used in any other form. Furthermore, 
the tobacco chewing tends usually to interfere 
with digestion and thus to strike at the very 
fountain-head of all health. 

Besides the nicotine, tobacco smoke, so chem¬ 
ists tell us, contains several poisonous sub¬ 
stances. Pyridine, quinoline, hydrocyanic acid, 
aldehydes, ammonia, and carbon monoxide, are 
all found in tobacco smoke. Hydrocyanic acid 
is a deadly poison, while one of the aldehydes 
known as furfurol is a constituent of the harm¬ 
ful fusel-oil of alcohol. Carbon monoxide 
is another deadly poison; it is the poisonous 
element of illuminating gas. It destroys the 
red blood corpuscles. The anemia which fre¬ 
quently occurs in smokers may be explained 
in this way. Thus, while the smoker gets, pos¬ 
sibly, less nicotine than the man who chews, 
he takes into his system varying amounts of 
poisonous materials. About the only difference 
between cigar and pipe smokers is that the 
latter get smaller amounts of nicotine at one 
time, but at more frequent intervals. 


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89 


Cigarette smoking is by far the most injuri¬ 
ous manner in which tobacco is used. The cig¬ 
arette smoker does not consume any more to¬ 
bacco than the cigar smoker, sixty cigarettes 
being equivalent to about ten average cigars, 
but the cigarette smoker “inhales” or draws 
the smoke down into the bronchial tubes and 
thus exposes to the tobacco fumes a far greater 
mucous membrane surface. This means that 
much more of the poisons are absorbed into the 
system. 

Again, the ease with which the cigarette is 
kept constantly at hand permits frequent in¬ 
dulgence and in this way the cigarette smoker 
can keep himself thoroughly under the influ¬ 
ence of the drug. The cigarette smoker fre¬ 
quently resembles the morphine and opium 
user in the color of the skin, the state of his 
nutrition and elimination, and his mental and 
moral characteristics. 

Smoking in a closed room is more injurious 
than smoking in the open, because the smoke is 
being reinhaled and a greater percentage of 
its poisonous elements is being absorbed. 

Tobacco, then, hurts in some manner every 
one who uses it. Men who are below par in 


90 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


their health are hurt far more than vigorous 
men. Men who lead indoor lives, doing seden¬ 
tary and brain work, are injured much more 
than those who lead an outdoor life or who do 
muscular work. Tobacco does far more harm 
in the young and in the old than in the middle- 
aged. A small amount of tobacco in one person 
will do as much, if not more, harm than a large 
amount in another. The thin, dyspeptic office 
man wlio smokes only one cigar or a “few pipe¬ 
fuls” a day, and thinks it doesn’t hurt him be¬ 
cause his robust neighbor smokes ten to fifteen 
cigars daily, is mistaken; frequently he is hurt 
much more than his neighbor. 

While tobacco affects different persons in 
different ways, in pratically every tobacco user 
it causes some form of disordered digestion, 
usually associated with an excess of acid in the 
stomach. This hyperacidity favors the forma¬ 
tion of gastric ulcer. As a result of failure to 
digest the food properly we may have weak¬ 
ness, lack of endurance and other evidences of 
malnutrition. Tobacco, through its effect on 
the nervous system, interferes with the proper 
burning of the food. Thus, tobacco is an anti- 
fat; it keeps the thin man thin; it does, how- 


SLOWING DOWN 


91 


ever, Lake away the fat man’s appetite and 
often prevents his eating sufficient food to in¬ 
crease his weight. Nevertheless, this is as 
harmful a way to keep down the weight as to 
take drugs used for that purpose. 

Tobacco, by preventing the proper burning 
of the food, also prevents its proper elimina¬ 
tion. Thus tobacco causes a retention in the 
body of waste materials which lead to autoin¬ 
toxication, with headaches, depressed state of 
mind, lack of energy and irritability of temper 
as well as nervousness, rheumatism and catarrh. 
In vigorous men this autointoxication may be 
manifest in no other way than by a rise in the 
blood pressure and premature hardening of 
the arteries. Tobacco is one of the most com¬ 
mon causes of high blood pressure and arterial 
sclerosis. In this way many vigorous men who 
use large quantities of tobacco with apparent 
immunity are getting ready to die young, of 
apoplexy, or heart disease incident to hardened 
arteries. In considering tobacco as a common 
cause of that rapidly increasing disease, hard¬ 
ening of the arteries, it is interesting to note 
that in recent experiments with rabbits, arterial 
sclerosis was brought about by putting tobacco 


92 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


water in the food, as well as by their inhaling 
tobacco smoke. 

Years of smoking sometimes cause dimness 
and sometimes loss of vision, due to atrophy of 
the optic nerve. Similarly, from the effect of 
nicotine on the nerves of hearing, deafness is 
sometimes caused. The extensive use of to¬ 
bacco—in some persons hut little tobacco—may 
affect the heart, causing palpitation, irregular 
heart heat, pain and shortness of breath on ex¬ 
ertion. This condition, known as “tobacco 
heart,” has been the cause of death from sud¬ 
den heart failure in high altitudes. A number 
of persons with tobacco heart have died on 
trains while crossing the western mountains. 

It can readily be seen that tobacco, in pre¬ 
venting the proper digestion and utilization of 
the food and the elimination of the waste, low¬ 
ers greatly the natural disease-resisting power 
of the body. So, while the tobacco user may be 
unusually vigorous and stay well in spite of 
the habit, nevertheless, he is more susceptible 
to disease, and should disease become estab¬ 
lished, it is more difficult to bring about a cure. 
In fact, it is usually impossible to cure chronic 
disease in tobacco usex’s unless the drug is dis- 


SLOWING DOWN 


93 


continued. The first step for the tobacco user 
who makes up his mind to live for health, is to 
give up the habit. For a man to exert some care 
with his food, and to continue the use of to¬ 
bacco, is to “strain at a gnat and swallow a 
camel.” Tobacco, even in small quantities, will 
usually do more harm to the man below the 
health standard, than correction of food will do 
good. And, the less the tobacco user eats, the 
more nicotine will be absorbed into the system; 
so it is not advisable, as long as tobacco is used, 
to attempt to correct the universal habit of 
overeating. The first step toward health must 
be to cut off tobacco. 

We have seen the harmful effect of tobacco 
in a physical way, but in its effect upon the 
brain it does far more damage than upon the 
other organs of the body. Tobacco is a nerve 
poison; it seeks out the delicate nerve centers, 
and the brain bears the brunt of the constant 
poisoning of the tobacco habitue. Tobacco, by 
its powerful narcotic effect, dulls the mental¬ 
ity, robs a man of his ambition and energy, and 
takes away the power to think clearly, to weigh 
carefully and to decide quickly. In these days 
of sharp competition and great requirements. 


94 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


these are the essentials to success; no man, who 
wants or needs to do his best can afford to use 
even a small amount of the drug. 

Many a five-thousand-dollar-a-year man is 
plugging along at one hundred and twenty- 
five dollars a month because tobacco is robbing 
him of his efficiency. Meylan, of Columbia 
University, in summing up his studies of the 
tobacco habit in students, says, “The use of 
tobacco by college students is closely associated 
with idleness, lack of ambition, lack of appli¬ 
cation, and low scholarship.” Tobacco does its 
greatest harm among brain workers. The 
soothing, quieting effect of a narcotic drug is 
a delusion and a snare; while tobacco is “quiet¬ 
ing the nerves,” it is stealthily stealing away 
the brain power, sapping the ambition, and 
destroying the body and mind. 

Irreparable injury is done to the kidneys, 
arteries and parts of the nervous system, as a 
result of years of tobacco using; but practically 
all the evil effects of the drug gradually dis¬ 
appear when it is discontinued. There is not an 
easy way to quit tobacco; like toy other nar¬ 
cotic drug, after the habit is formed it holds its 
victim securely in its clutches and considerable 


SLOWING DOWN 


95 


exertion of will power is required to break 
away. If the user’s mind is thoroughly made 
up to overcome the habit, it is much easier; but 
the longer the drug has been used, and the 
larger the quantity, the harder it is to discon¬ 
tinue its use. The man whom tobacco injures 
the most finds it hardest to quit; in fact, the 
more the drug is injuring the victim, the harder 
it becomes to abandon it. 

The easiest way to cure the tobacco habit is 
to stop short and not go back to it even in small 
quantities. Tapering off rarely succeeds, and 
in the end it is much harder than stopping 
short. In the same way, the surest way to re¬ 
main cured is to leave it absolutely alone. The 
heavy smoker rarely confines himself to a small 
amount of tobacco for any length of time; he 
soon has increased to the usual amount; if lie 
hasn’t, by teasing himself with a small quantity 
he is put to greater inconvenience than is com¬ 
pensated for by the satisfaction obtained. 

One of the greatest helps in curing the to¬ 
bacco habit is proper food. There is no ques¬ 
tion but that the irritation to the stomach from 
overeating in general, as well as the irritation 
to the nervous system from chronic food poi- 


96 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


soning, calls for the “quieting” effect of to¬ 
bacco. The man who eats only plain, easily di¬ 
gested foods, in amounts not to exceed his real 
needs, has no desire for stimulants, narcotics 
and alcoholics. Our menus in the latter part of 
this book are suitable for the average man in 
stopping tobacco, and their use will assist 
greatly in overcoming the desire for the drug. 
The writer has seen confirmed tobacco users 
who, after ten days, had no difficulty in staying 
away from the usual smoke or chew, and in two 
months’ time had lost entirely their desire, 
simply by discontinuing the use of the tobacco 
and following the proper diet. 

Daily care of the skin hastens the elimina¬ 
tion of the accumulated poison through the 
pores, and assists in overcoming the habit and 
in getting the body in good condition. Sweat 
baths and Turkish baths are also valuable. 
Systematic exercise, by lending a greater sta¬ 
bility to the nervous system, is also a help in 
relieving the nervous symptoms. Systematic 
exercise strengthens the will and helps the vic¬ 
tim to resist temptation. The chewing of gum 
or gentian, or lovage, is permissible, but the use 
of bromides, atropine, or narcotic drugs that 


SLOWING DOWN 


97 


frequently form a part of the tobacco cures, 
should be avoided. The cure should be a physi¬ 
ologic one; the drug should he cut short, and 
the overburdened organs should be relieved in 
a normal way. 

This brings us to the last hut by no means 
the least harmful of the every-day poisons that 
slow down your machine—drugs. And when 
we say drugs we mean much of the medicine 
that people are in the habit of taking, from 
little innocent-looking digestive tablets, to the 
dangerous headache remedies that are respon¬ 
sible for many sudden deaths every year. With 
but few exceptions, drugs are poisons. Their 
effect on the body is due to the effort which 
the body puts forth to eliminate them. This 
effort is always attended by more or less harm, 
even in the person who takes drugs only oc¬ 
casionally. Too often drugs are whips; they 
spur on the tired organ that realty needs rest. 
Except in emergencies, drugs, at best, usually 
afford only a little temporary relief, often pur¬ 
chased at a fearful price. Furthermore, drug 
taking leads the sick man away from the real 
cause of his disease; hence, away from a real 


cure. 


98 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Physicians everywhere are prescribing drugs 
much less than even a few years ago; it is in¬ 
teresting to note that almost no drugs are now 
being used in the treatment of pneumonia, ty¬ 
phoid fever and other acute diseases. In the 
same way, physicians everywhere are prescrib¬ 
ing smaller amounts of drugs in the chronic 
diseases. It is being rapidly recognized that 
chronic drug taking is often a cause for chronic 
disease. We are all beginning to believe the 
great truth that it is nature that really cures, 
and that drugs are often likely to interfere 
with nature’s effort to bring about the cure. 

However, drug taking in the form of patent 
medicines is rapidly on the increase. Promis¬ 
cuous drug taking in this way is most injuri¬ 
ous for the reason that, not only are large quan¬ 
tities of really harmful drugs often used, but 
the self-diagnosis of the patent-medicine de¬ 
votee often leads the victim to take drugs which 
are never recommended by physicians for the 
particular ailment from which he suffers. 

The most popular patent medicines are the 
cathartics. It is estimated that over a third of 
the people of the United States use cathartics 
regularly. Not only is this conclusive evidence 


SLOWING DOWN 


99 


that our habits of eating are wrong, but it is 
evidence that a large number of people are 
being led away from measures that would cor¬ 
rect constipation and the digestive disturb¬ 
ances upon which it depends. Any physician 
will tell you that the long continued use of 
cathartics and laxative drugs depletes the di¬ 
gestion and thus strikes at the very fountain¬ 
head of health and vigor. 

Probably the next most widely used class of 
patent medicines is that containing the stimu¬ 
lants and sedatives. Something to whip you 
up in the morning, to keep you going during 
the day; then, something else to quiet you down 
at night so that you can sleep. These drugs 
are usually offered for sale under the delusive 
names of tonics, nerve foods, nerve remedies, 
etc. 

Of these drugs, the well-known scientist. 
Professor D. S. Gordon, says: 

“The influence of all drugs which affect the 
nervous system must be in the direction of dis¬ 
integration. The healthy mind stands in clear 
and normal relations to Nature. It feels pain 
as pain. It feels action as pleasure. The drug 
which conceals pain or gives false pleasure 
when pleasure does not exist, forces a lie upon 


100 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the nervous system. The drug which disposes 
to reverie rather than to work, which makes 
us feel well when we are not well, destroys the 
sanity of life. All stimulants, narcotics and 
tonics which affect the nervous system in what¬ 
ever way, reduce the truthfulness of sensation, 
thought and action. Toward insanity all such 
influences lead; and their effect, slight though 
it be, is one of the same nature as mania. The 
man who would see clearly, think truthfully 
and act effectively, must avoid them all. Emer¬ 
gency aside, he can not safely force upon his 
nervous system even the smallest falsehood. 
And here iies the one great unanswerable argu¬ 
ment for total abstinence; not abstinence from 
alcohol alone, but from all nerve poisons and 
emotional excesses.” 

In this connection it should be mentioned 
that a certain class of immensely popular pat¬ 
ent medicines, usually advertised for their tonic 
properties, are compounded very largely of 
alcohol, and depend for whatever effect they 
have mainly upon alcoholic stimulation. Even 
in these ‘‘dry” times, alcohol by the carload is 
being shipped out of the patent-medicine fac¬ 
tories, and consumed by large numbers of peo¬ 
ple, disguised as “tonics,” “blood builders,” 
“liver regulators,” etc. 

A fact of tremendous and alarming import 
brought out by the last census is that, during 


SLOWING DOWN 


101 


the past thirty years, the number of men dying 
in the prime of life has doubled. This increase 
of deaths is due to what are known as the de¬ 
generative diseases: Bright’s disease, diseases 
of the heart, and those incident to hardening 
of the arteries. Right along with this increase 
in deaths during the prime of life, and tre¬ 
mendous increase in degenerative diseases, it 
is shown that during the same period we have 
multiplied the consumption of drugs four and 
one-half times. For them we are now spend¬ 
ing over half a billion dollars every year. It 
has further been shown that the use of drugs is 
an important cause of these degenerative dis¬ 
eases; that Bright’s disease and hardening of 
the arteries are superinduced in no small part 
by the use of drugs. 

This matter was considered of such impor¬ 
tance by our government that a pamphlet in 
regard to it was issued by The National Bu¬ 
reau of Public Plealth, entitled Drug Intoxi¬ 
cation an Economic Waste , and a 3Ienace to 
Public Health . In it the dangers of drug tak¬ 
ing, including the promiscuous and long con¬ 
tinued use of drugs in the form of patent med¬ 
icines, have been clearly pointed out. This 


102 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


pamphlet goes into detail and shows that such 
popular drugs as calomel, headache tablets, 
sleep-producing remedies, and even quinine, 
aspirin, and the salicylates (so popular for 
rheumatism), each and every one is objection¬ 
able, and that each works harm to the human 
body in its own particular way. It is true that 
they produce, oftentimes, an apparently good 
effect, but in reality they are hostile to the 
human mechanism and, in the long run, the 
user must pay for their temporary benefits a 
price many times greater than such benefits 
are worth. The whole matter is summed up in 
these words: “All of the important or active 
medicaments, of necessity have harmful influ¬ 
ences when taken indiscriminately, or for a con¬ 
tinued length of time.” 

The very essence of the patent-medicine 
habit is that it consists of taking drugs “indis¬ 
criminately,” and “for a continued length of 
time.” It is for this reason that we consider 
patent medicines among the most injurious of 
the every-day poisons that slow down the ma¬ 
chine. 


CHAPTER VII 


CARE OF THE SKIN AND CLOTHING 

The skin is much more than a covering 1 for 
the body. It is an important organ just as the 
kidneys and stomach are important organs. 
W e are all familiar with the role which the skin 
plays in protecting the body from the outside 
world by means of our pain and temperature 
senses, located in its area. But there are other 
far more important functions which the skin 
performs to which we seldom pay any atten¬ 
tion, but which must be well discharged to keep 
the body at the top notch of health. 

The first and most important of these func¬ 
tions is that of elimination. The skin is one of 
the great body sewers. Through its pores no 
small part of the waste materials of the system 
are eliminated. This process of elimination 
goes on unconsciously. In warm weather the 
perspiration with its load of waste materials 
is usually quite apparent, but in cold weather 
the pores of the skin are carrying out the im- 


103 


104 


taking it on high 

purities of the body just the same, by means of 
invisible perspiration. Remember that whether 
you are conscious of it or not, day and night, 
the skin is at work eliminating body waste. 

In the man who has a sluggish skin the waste 
materials accumulate in the system and disease 
of some kind follows. Rheumatism, catarrh, 
nervousness, and general debdity are fre¬ 
quently partly due to defective elimination. 
One of our great prevalent maladies, Riiglits 
disease, and its associated disorders, can he 
traced in part to the sluggish skin. The skin 
and the kidneys do the same kind of work. 
When the skin fails to do its share, the kidneys 
are overworked, eventually they break down 
and the result is Bright’s disease, with asso¬ 
ciated arteriosclerosis and its evil effect upon 
every part of the body. 

On the other hand, when our skin is active 
the impurities are carried out of the body rap¬ 
idly; thus we can avoid the various diseases, 
including the “catching cold” habit, that de¬ 
pend upon poor elimination. An active skin is 
not only one of the chief essentials to longevity 
hut it is one of the big things that make for the 
bright eye, the clear brain, and the quick step. 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 105 


How are we going to keep the skin active? 
The answer is simple: take good care of it. Our 
skin, like the rest of the body, is designed to 
operate automatically, provided it gets the 
right care. 

The skin should be cleansed daily in order to 
keep the pores cleaned out and to keep the 
blood circulating vigorously. For most per¬ 
sons this daily treatment should be a sponge 
bath. In our chapter on “Tuning Up for the 
Day’s Run,” we tell you just how to take a 
sponge bath that requires but little time and 
which will keep the skin in active condition. 
The sponge bath should always be taken in 
tepid , not cold water. The cold plunge, or 
even the cold sponge bath is too great a shock 
for the average person. While a sense of stim¬ 
ulation and exhilaration may accompany cold 
bathing, the tepid bath accomplishes just as 
much permanent good, and avoids the nerve 
depletion that often follows continuous cold 
bathing. 

For those who don’t use the daily tepid 
sponge, and in cold weather for the man or 
woman who “feels the cold,” the dry rub is 
recommended. (See Chapter XIX.) 


106 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


The aboriginal, who from all accounts was 
the embodiment of perfect health, exposed his 
skin to the air. Our skin action and our health 
generally would be bettered by following as 
far as possible the same habit. After your 
morning sponge or rub-down take your morn¬ 
ing exercise before putting on your clothes. 
You will soon really enjoy this air bath; more¬ 
over, it toughens the skin and assists in avoid- 
ing colds. 

While you are tuning up for the day, your 
rub-down will rub away any grouch that you 
may have. In fact, there is no part of your 
daily care that will give you quite as much 
pleasure after you have formed the habit, as 
your morning sponge. It lends a sense of 
exhilaration; the day’s prospects look brighter; 
and it adds much to one’s sense of physical 
well-being. To begin the day clean enhances 
one’s self-respect, adds to his courage, and in¬ 
creases the qualities that make for success. A 
few minutes spent each morning in putting 
your skin right will be more than compensated 
for in increased health, energy and real dollars. 

From ancient times there comes to us a 
thought concerning the care of the human body 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 107 


which it is a pity has been largely lost in mod¬ 
ern days. The ancients looked upon the human 
body as a temple worthy to be reverently kept, 
carefully cleaned and set in order each day. 
It would be well for us if we, like the ancients, 
would make the daily right care of our bodies 
something of a religion—if we regarded it as 
a sacred duty to perform faithfully those hy¬ 
gienic rites which keep the body-temple a fit 
dwelling place for mind and soul. 

In addition to the daily sponge bath or rub- 
down every one should have a hot tub bath or 
hot shower bath with soap “whether he needs 
it or not,” at least three times a week in the 
summer and twice a week in the winter. Those 
who try an occasional real bath are always 
ready to testify as to its beneficial effects. 

Of late years the shower bath has become 
increasingly popular, and justly so. A hot 
shower bath taken with plenty of soap is really 
more effective as a genuine cleansing process 
than a tub bath. Because even in the best tub 
bath one can not escape rinsing in a solution 
of his own dirt. Furthermore, by the shower- 
bath method we escape any risk of infection 
from the uncleanliness or disease of a previous 


108 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

user of the tub—an important point in public 
or hotel baths, but one which is by no means 
negligible even in private homes. The bath¬ 
tub may or may not be strictly antiseptic; the 
shower bath is always clean. 

After you have taken your morning sponge 
and rub-down, and have taken your morning 
exercise with the skin exposed, it is time to 
think of clothing. You will be feeling so good 
that you will be loath to burden your body with 
the habiliments which custom and climate dic¬ 
tate as necessary, but it must be done. Let us 
then consider the matter of clothing. The first 
mistake to avoid in regard to clothing is to 
avoid putting on too much. In other words, 
remember that the skin is a protector; it is an 
error to over-protect this protector. 

This brings us to another important func¬ 
tion of the skin, that of regulating the heat 
production in the body. From the cradle to 
the grave, day in and day out, when you are 
awake and when you are asleep, the tissues 
are constantly burning up food materials that 
produce heat. This food burning and heat 
production is under the control of the heat cen¬ 
ters in the brain; these heat centers regulate 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 109 


the heat production to meet the need of the 
body. This regulation in turn is maintained 
largely by a multitude of little nerves in the 
skin. When the weather turns cool suddenly, 
or even when you go from a warm room to a 
cold room, the message is flashed from the skin 
to the brain that more heat is needed. At once 
the heat centers speed up the heat production 
in the body and the body radiators are turned 
on. On the other hand, on a hot summer day 
when you need little or no heat, if your skin 
is working right, the nerve centers of the brain 
are apprised of the outside warmth by the 
nerves of the skin, and the heat production is 
lowered to the minimum. 

In order that the skin may carry out this 
important function of heat regulation, keep 
you warm in cold weather and keep you cool in 
hot weather, and protect you against sudden 
changes, it must not be over-clothed . You can 
see that if your skin is covered so tightly that 
the air can’t get to it the body fires are likely 
to lag in cold weather and to become too active 
in hot weather. Over-clothing the body pre¬ 
vents the proper heat regulation in both sum¬ 
mer and winter. How are we going to clothe 


110 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

ourselves so that our body fires may be regu¬ 
lated at all seasons? 

Let us begin with the underwear; the right 
selection of your underwear has far more to do 
with your daily health, comfort and efficiency 
than most people think. In selecting our un¬ 
derwear, as in selecting all of our clothing, our 
problem is to maintain the body at its normal 
temperature, to prevent an undue loss of heat, 
but at the same time to keep the skin in active 
condition. Because of the varying circum¬ 
stances under which different persons live, no 
set rule can be made covering every case. 

The indoor man must, of course, dress dif¬ 
ferently from the outdoor man. One rule we 
should make is this: If we spend any consid¬ 
erable amount of time indoors, our clothing 
while indoors should be very little heavier in 
winter than it is in the summer. The reason 
for this is obvious. Our steam-heated houses 
and offices are just about as warm in winter as 
in summer. Consequently, there is no need in 
winter, while indoors, to wear clothing heavier 
than in summer. If we do, we shall be over¬ 
clothing the body, overheating the skin surface 
and rendering it over-susceptible to the cold 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 111 


air, with the result that we feel the cold far 
more easily upon going out-of-doors; we shall 
find it more difficult to keep warm and much 
easier to catch cold. 

In summer we should wear the very lightest 
underwear—the A. K. C. of skin health in sum¬ 
mer is the B. V. D. In winter, if we spend 
most of our time indoors we should wear a gar¬ 
ment but little heavier. We should increase 
the weight of the outside clothing in winter 
even when indoors and, when going out-of- 
doors we can, of course, add a sufficient amount 
of clothing by putting on an overcoat. In this 
way the heavy clothing can be put on only as 
it is needed. Of course those who spend most 
of their time out-of-doors can wear heavier un¬ 
derclothing without being obliged to overheat 
the skin surface a good part of the time. At 
all times you should wear sufficient clothing 
to keep the body comfortable, but the under¬ 
clothing should be comparatively light and the 
outside clothing heavy enough to afford ample 
protection. 

As we pointed out above, light underwear 
in the winter and summer affords the skin 
ample ventilation—one of the essentials to 


112 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


good health; it also makes it possible for the 
body to regulate the heat production to meet 
its actual needs. It is almost true to say that 
one can dress in cold weather so heavily that 
he will keep cold. Incidentally, while he is 
doing this there will he large amounts of waste 
materials and food materials accumulating in 
the body which ordinarily would he burned up 
to keep the body warm, provided, of course, 
that the regulator, the skin, was being cared 
for and clothed so as to keep the body furnaces 
going normally. 

And here is another fact about underwear. 
Nature intended that our skin should be kept 
dry. Heavy underwear, in preventing proper 
ventilation, allows the skin to become moist 
from both the invisible and visible perspira¬ 
tion, especially while we are indoors. For this 
reason, on going out-of-doors the skin will be 
more or less moist, and we are more likely to 
feel the cold. Heavy underwear, by keeping 
the skin moist—especially before underwear 
changing time in the spring—is one of the 
chief causes for those spring colds that are so 
hard to shake off. Wearing heavy underwear 
while you are indoors means that the under- 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 113 


wear itself becomes more or less saturated with 
the perspiration; then, when you go out-of- 
doors in cold weather your skin is covered by 
a soggy covering that becomes chilled very 
easily. In the end you are much colder than 
if you wore light underwear that permitted 
both the skin and the underwear to keep dry. 

Wool is a mighty good covering for the 
skin of a sheep, but poorly adapted for the skin 
of mankind. Centuries ago, when woolen un¬ 
derwear for the human species came into gen¬ 
eral use, we did not know what we know now 
—that the sheep’s skin functions physiologic¬ 
ally in a manner totally different from that of 
man: sheep don’t sweat; men do. Conse¬ 
quently, while the sheep can wear wool next to 
his skin without its becoming saturated with 
perspiration, and damp and dirty, this is just 
what happens when man attempts to adopt the 
sheep’s underclothing. Woolen underwear is 
unhealthful for men. The wool absorbs the 
impurities of the body, retaining these impuri¬ 
ties in its fiber. When we consider the large 
amount of impurities that are constantly going 
out of the skin in the invisible perspiration, it 
is easy to see how within a few hours after 


114 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


clean woolen underwear has been put on, it is 
really dirty, and how, until the underwear is 
changed, the man’s body is covered with a fab¬ 
ric that is literally saturated with its own secre¬ 
tions. As our friend Shakespeare says, “He 
stews in his own grease.” 

Loose woven undergarments, such as the 
mesh underwear, permit the fresh air with its 
life-giving oxygen to reach the skin surface, 
and allow the escape of the vitiated air loaded 
with gaseous body poisons. With this kind of 
underwear the skin is able to do its share of 
the work in carrying off the body waste. With 
this sort of underwear the body fires are fanned 
in winter and smothered in summer; the skin 
is kept dry, the underwear is kept dry, sudden 
chilling in cold weather is prevented and the 
“catching cold” habit is usually eliminated. 

The body should be clothed evenly. In this 
respect women are worse offenders than men, 
although men frequently, by wearing in the 
winter short underwear and low shoes, leave 
their legs and ankles without sufficient protec¬ 
tion. As a matter of fact, the ankles and the 
wrists are the parts of the body where the blood 
comes closest to the surface and, if we are to 


SKIN AND CLOTHING 


115 


retain as much as possible of the body heat in 
winter, these parts of the body should be 
clothed as heavily as any other part. In fact, 
the rule should be that the body should be 
clothed evenly all over. High shoes, not low, 
should be worn in winter; likewise, underwear 
with long sleeves and legs sufficiently long to 
be tucked down into the shoes. 

No small part of our health depends upon 
good skin action. By keeping the skin active, 
by clothing it properly, we can keep warmer 
in winter, and more of our impurities will be 
burned up than by following the usual hit- 
and-miss habits of skin care and clothing. 
Wear cotton underwear, not woolen, prefera¬ 
bly mesh, as light as possible in summer and 
but very little heavier in winter, especially if 
you live indoors. In winter sufficient clothing 
to afford ample protection should be added 
when we leave the summer atmosphere of our 
offices and flats, to go out-of-doors. 

Here a word of warning is in order against 
overheated houses and offices. Sixty-eight 
degrees is the best indoor temperature in win¬ 
ter time; but many rooms are constantly kept 
at seventy-five or eighty degrees. In effects 


116 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


on the skin action, the seven degrees between 
sixty-eight and seventy-five degrees make a 
difference much greater than most people 
appreciate. When the room is too hot, the 
skin and underclothing both become moist, and 
the skin becomes over-sensitive—its system of 
defense against cold is broken down. Then, 
when we go outdoors, the skin is over suscepti¬ 
ble to chill, and we easily take cold. Keep 
yourself from indoor overheat in winter if you 
want your skin to protect you as it should. 


CHAPTER VIII 


CONSTIPATION 

Constipation is the failure of the lower 
bowel to evacuate itself totally, or in part, in 
the normal length of time. Food should re¬ 
main in the system only from twenty-four to 
thirty-six hours; if the residue is not eliminated 
in this length of time, constipation exists. 
Thus constipation may be total or partial. It 
is possible for one to have a bowel movement 
every day and at the same time be constipated, 
a portion of the food remaining in the large 
intestine longer than the normal time. 

Constipation is due to many causes, but by 
far the most important and the most common 
cause is to be found in the usual habits of eat- 
ing. Nine cases out of ten of constipation are 
traceable almost entirely to the food; constipa¬ 
tion is a food disorder. As we shall show later, 
constipation is not a disease in itself; on the 
contrary, it is usually the result of digestive 


117 


118 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


disturbances. Constipation does not cause 
indigestion; indigestion causes constipation. 
With the exception of occasional cases, the fail¬ 
ure of the bowels to evacuate themselves regu¬ 
larly and completely is due to one or more of 
the following causes: over-distention of the in¬ 
testine from gas; lack of sufficient bulky ma¬ 
terial in the diet; lack of normal secretions, 
particularly the bile. 

Over-distention of the intestine from gas is 
simply due to eating more food than can be 
digested and used, or to eating foods that 
are difficult to digest. Either of these errors 
in diet results in the accumulation of unused 
food in the lower bowel. This food ferments 
and decomposes, and forms gases which dis¬ 
tend the bowel and overstretch the muscles of 
which it is composed. This overstretching 
weakens these muscles, with the result that the 
bowel contents are not pushed along as rapidly 
as they should be. Constipation does not cause 
gas; on the contrary, gas is the result of un¬ 
suitable food; then constipation comes on as 
the result of the over-distention of the bowel 
muscles by this gas. 

Lack of residue in the bowel is simply the 


CONSTIPATION 


119 


lcsult of not eating 1 sufficient bulky food, such 
as fruits and vegetables, and coarse breads. 
Fine white flour and the usual concentrated 
diet which omits vegetables, salads and fruits, 
because they are “not nourishing,” is one of 
the leading causes for the wide-spread prev¬ 
alence of constipation. This coarse material, 
which should be a part of every meal, stimu¬ 
lates the nerves which control the muscles of 
the bowel, as well as those which control the 
secreting glands. In this w r ay sufficient bulky 
food in the diet increases the muscular activity 
of the bowel, and increases the flow of digestive 
juices. 

Beginning with the saliva in the mouth, 
every one of our digestive secretions is laxative 
in its effect. This is particularly true of the 
bile, which may be considered the natural laxa¬ 
tive. An abundance of all of these secretions 
is necessary to normal bowel activity; lack of 
them is due usually to improper diet, and to 
insufficient mastication. When we chew our 
food thoroughly, the nerves of the stomach and 
intestine are affected in such a way as to cause 
an abundance of all of the digestive secretions 
to be poured out into the digestive tube. In 


120 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 

the same way, rough, bulky food in the diet, 
such as fruits, vegetables and coarse bread, 
stimulates the nerves of digestion and increases 
all of the digestive fluids. Plenty of digestive 
juice means normal bowel activity. To get 
this juice, it is necessary to chew our food thor¬ 
oughly, to eat plenty of bulky food, and at the 
same time to keep the intestine in healthy con¬ 
dition, by avoiding both overeating and the 
eating of rich foods that are difficult to digest. 

Just here let us call attention to the fact that 
the “sluggish liver,” which is so frequently 
blamed for constipation, is nothing more nor 
less than a catarrhal condition of the bile pas¬ 
sages, the result of an unhealthy condition of 
the intestine, due, in turn, to overeating, and 
to bad food hygiene generally. Every case of 
“sluggish liver” has been brought about by the 
fermentation and putrefaction of undigested, 
unused food in the intestine. 

Still another cause for constipation, which is 
more frequent in young people, is inattention 
to nature’s calls—lack of regularity. It is an 
easy matter to develop constipation by failing 
to give the bowels a regular daily opportunity 
to evacuate themselves. Every one should have 


CONSTIPATION 


121 


a regular time for this health-bringing habit; 
either just on arising, or just after breakfast, 
is preferable. 

Constipation is ordinarily blamed for a large 
percentage of all of our ills. The average per¬ 
son afflicted with this disorder usually attrib¬ 
utes to it every deviation he suffers from the 
normal health standard. This is, in good part, 
a mistake. While normal bowel activity is 
necessary to good health, constipation in itself 
causes but a small part of our sickness. The 
facts are these: Constipation is due princi¬ 
pally to the fermentation and putrefaction of 
unused food in the bowels, plus a number of 
other less important factors. The poisons that 
are formed, as this food ferments and decom¬ 
poses, are the principal cause of the many ills 
which accompany constipation. In this way, 
the same factors which cause constipation, 
cause at the same time most of the ills which 
accompany this disorder, and which are usually 
attributed to it. Only by delaying the expul¬ 
sion of food that has become a poison, does 
constipation really cause any considerable 
amount of disease. 

A real cure of constipation and the accom- 


122 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 

panying disorders is to be accomplished only 
by removing the various causes of the trouble, 
and by adopting a diet and habits of eating 
which restore the intestinal tube, and its various 
secretions, to normal conditions. We do not 
mean by this merely the addition to the usual 
diet of irritating material, or patent breakfast 
foods which tend to overstimulate the intestine 
for a time; but rather the adoption of normal 
habits of eating. 

In curing constipation, overeating should 
receive first attention; not only overeating on 
meats, but on breads and other foods as well. 
This is necessary in order to avoid fermenta¬ 
tion in the bowels, which is one of the principal 
causes of constipation. Living on two meals 
a day, with or without the light lunch at noon, 
will do much toward getting away from the 
habit of overeating. Avoiding all soft breads 
and masticating all foods thoroughly will also 
help materially in restoring a normal appetite, 
which protects one against the habit of taking 
more food than he can digest and use up. 

Nearly every one is familiar with the fact 
that vegetables, particularly those of the non- 
starchy kind, and those used in preparing sal- 


CONSTIPATION 


123 


ads, likewise fruits and bran, are particularly 
helpful in combating constipation; every meal 
should contain some of this laxative material. 
These foods stimulate the nerves of digestion, 
increase the muscular activity of the bowels, 
and the amount of digestive juices. Our con¬ 
centrated foods must he “balanced up” by a 
liberal addition of these bulky foods. Every¬ 
thing we mention in this hook about avoiding 
fried foods, cooking so as to make foods easily 
digested, is directly applicable to the cure of 
constipation. 

One of the first essentials to effect a cure 
is to leave off all physics, cathartics and laxa¬ 
tives. Most of these drugs operate by irritat¬ 
ing the delicate intestinal wall. Especially 
is this true of those that are taken to “stir up 
the liver”; even' though they are “vegetable 
remedies,” they upset the digestion and over¬ 
stimulate the already depleted intestinal tract. 
This is the reason why they tend to make con¬ 
stipation more chronic. Laxatives must be 
avoided by those who want to restore the in¬ 
testinal tract to a healthful condition. About 
the only exception to this rule is in the case of 
the saline laxatives, those composed of the 


124 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

various combinations of mineral salts. This 
class of laxatives is valuable occasionally for 
a thorough cleaning out, but as every one 
knows, when used extensively, they tend to 
increase constipation. Petroleum oil is not 
open to the same objection that may be made 
to most of the laxative and cathartic drugs; it 
tends to increase the muscular activity of the 
digestive tube in an apparently harmless way. 
It does not, how r ever, remove the unsuitable 
diet and bad habits of eating which are the real 
causes. 

In the cure of constipation, the bowels must 
have some assistance, temporarily, while a 
healthy condition is being restored through 
proper habits of eating. This assistance may 
be had through the enema. The enema is bet¬ 
ter for this purpose than any laxative medi¬ 
cine, because it is the only method of evacuat¬ 
ing the bowels that is not habit-forming. 
After beginning the proper diet, from a few 
days to two or three weeks are needed before 
the bowels move normally; in the meantime 
they should be moved daily with an enema of 
from one to two quarts of water. Take the 
enema while lying on the left side. In the 


CONSTIPATION 


125 


majority of cases in a few days the amount of 
water used in the enema may be gradually cut 
down, until within two or three weeks, at the 
most, the stool will become soft, and the enema 
may be left off entirely. This is practically 
the only way by which the bowels may be edu¬ 
cated to move normally. 

Exercise is of great value in relieving consti¬ 
pation. Exercise increases the digestive power 
by sending out a call for more food in the body. 
Systematic exercise causes a larger amount of 
the food we eat to be consumed; in this way 
less food ferments in the lower bowel; the result 
is a healthier, more nearly normal condition of 
that organ. Exercise also actually increases 
the movement of the muscles of the intestine, 
especially bending exercises. 

Physical efficiency and constipation can not 
dwell together. Intestines loaded with putre¬ 
fying and decomposing waste materials, dis¬ 
tilling poisonous gases into the blood stream, 
can not live in the same body with a sweet 
breath, a bright eye, an elastic step, a clear 
brain. If you are suffering from constipation, 
you should set in motion at once the physio¬ 
logical forces that will free you from this in- 


126 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


cubus, for there is no use talking about effi¬ 
ciency in spite of constipation. You might as 
well try to take it on high with the brakes on. 
Clean out the body sewers and train them to 
keep themselves clean. Utilize nature’s laws 
and don’t dally with pink pills. You will be 
surprised to see the improvement in the power 
of the body motor. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE BIG FOUR: SYSTEMATIC EXERCISE, REGULAR 
REST, FRESH AIR AND PLAY 

We have heard much of the Big Four in the 
Peace Conference at Paris, and the great part 
they played in shaping the world’s destiny. 
There is a Big Four in every man’s physical 
life that plays an equally important part in 
shaping his fate. They are Systematic Exer¬ 
cise, Regular Rest, Fresh Air and Play. Sys¬ 
tematic exercise is needed by every man who is 
going to reach his greatest mental and physical 
possibilities. Rest, it goes without saying, is 
necessary to the human machine, which in this 
respect differs from the automobile. Fresh 
air, rich in life-sustaining oxygen, is essential 
to every person, and more especially the indoor 
man must take care of his fresh air supply. 
Lastly, all animals, including man, need play. 
It is said by experts that most people are up 
to only about thirty per cent, of their efficiency; 
that they are doing about a third of what they 

127 


128 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 

really can do. Most of us need to speed up; 
but in speeding up, we should not forget the 
need of the system for these four things. In 
fact, it is only through their aid that speed can 
be sustained. 

Next to the proper diet there is nothing 
which contributes as largely toward maintain¬ 
ing good health and the highest physical and 
mental efficiency as systematic exercise. By 
systematic exercise we mean the regular daily 
use of the muscles for the purpose of exercise 
only. It is a demonstrated fact that work 
doesn’t take the place of exercise ; work ex¬ 
hausts the muscles and depletes the nerve force. 
Systematic exercise, when properly carried out, 
even in a man who does hard physical work, 
assists in the recuperation of the muscles, rests 
the body, and, if you please, gets the muscles 
ready for more work. On the other hand, sys¬ 
tematic exercise in a brain worker draws the 
blood away from the brain, rests the tired 
nerves and keeps the nerve force up to par. 

Just how is systematic exercise beneficial to 
the man who works eight hours or more daily 
with his muscles? Practically all manual labor, 
no matter how varied it may he, involves the 


THE BIG FOUR 


129 


use of only a part of the body muscles, and 
often an overuse of these muscles. Systematic 
exercise brings all the muscles into play; it 
uses the unused muscles. The result is that 
the blood, with its waste material, is forced out 
of the tired muscles, while new blood with food 
materials to rebuild the muscles is forced in. 
Systematic exercise stimulates the functions of 
the kidneys and skin and hurries the waste out 
of the body, forces the blood rapidly through 
the lungs and accelerates the digestion of the 
food to supply new building material. 

While there might be an opportunity for 
argument in regard to the need for systematic 
physical exercise in the laboring man, there 
can be no doubt as to the real necessity for 
exercise for the brain worker. It is a fact that 
most cases of physical breakdown in brain 
workers, and in the people who lead the seden¬ 
tary indoor life, are due in good part to lack of 
physical exercise. A certain amount of muscu¬ 
lar activity is necessary to really good health, 
and to the maximum amount of mental vigor. 
Use of the muscles increases the nerve force, 
stimulates the circulation and carries the waste 
out of the body. Using your muscles after a 


130 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


day in the office of six or eight hours of brain 
work draws the blood away from the tired 
brain cells; carries it around through the lungs, 
where it receives fresh oxygen; forces it 
through the kidneys, where the waste materials 
are eliminated; and, finally, brings it back 
charged with food material that nourishes those 
weary brain cells. The more brain work a man 
does, the more he should balance up that brain 
work with systematic exercise. 

To be of real value, exercise must be taken 
regularly; it must he taken systematically; it 
must become a part of our daily life. To over¬ 
exercise for a few days, and then to neglect the 
exercise for a week, is to do harm rather than 
good. The man who works with his muscles 
should exercise at least once a day, while the 
sedentary worker needs systematic exercise 
twice daily. But remember that regularity is 
the keynote to real benefit. To get all out of 
systematic exercise that is to he had, exercise 
as regularly as you go to bed at night and 
get up in the morning. And remember that 
one should not omit his exercise at night just 
because he is tired. As we have shown, the 


THE BIG FOUR 


131 


more tired we are after the day’s work, the 
more we are in need of at least a few minutes’ 
exercise, in order to draw the blood away from 
the tired brain cells and tired muscles and to 
insure restful sleep. 

Systematic exercise should not be made 
laborious. There is a genuine exhilaration that 
comes from using one’s muscles, and this ought 
to make exercise a recreation. Exercises can 
be varied from time to time in such a way as to 
increase very materially their interest. There 
are many devices that aid in increasing effec¬ 
tiveness and add much to the enjoyment of 
physical exercise. Any or all of these are usu¬ 
ally good. The average man, however, who 
is really interested in up-building his health 
and increasing his efficiency, does not need any¬ 
thing more than this real incentive to carry out 
his exercises faithfully. The knowledge that 
he is doing a big thing along the line of self- 
development overcomes the monotony and 
adds to the real satisfaction of his daily ten or 
fifteen minutes’ exercise. Just here we might 
add that systematic exercise is one of the great¬ 
est aids in developing the will-power. Making 


132 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


your muscles obey your will is a big help in 
developing that higher self-control that makes 
for real success. 

The best time for the exercise is just after 
getting up or just before retiring; begin the 
day and end the day with a few minutes’ exer¬ 
cise. This plan is particularly convenient be¬ 
cause exercise is best taken with little or no 
clothing, and in this manner gives us the op¬ 
portunity to accustom the skin to the air, which 
means fewer colds and a better circulation. 

The most important factor, next to regu¬ 
larity, is concentrating the mind on the particu¬ 
lar muscles used. This is done more easily by 
working before a mirror and watching the play 
of the muscles. To this end, your exercises 
must be simple and only one or two sets of mus¬ 
cles should be used at a time. But remember 
that exercise is increased in effectiveness many 
times by keeping one’s mind centered on the 
muscles that are being used. This is the reason 
why the athlete, with an hour’s training each 
day in the gymnasium becomes much better 
developed physically, and has much more real 
strength and endurance than the mechanic who 
uses his muscles much harder for eight hours 


THE BIG FOUR 


133 


a day. Most persons exercise automatically; 
which means that they operate the muscles 
largely through the lower spinal nerve cells. 
If we add the full use of the upper brain cells 
by mental concentration, five minutes of this 
kind of exercise will be equal to a half-hour 
of the automatic kind. 

The length of time one should exercise de¬ 
pends largely on the person; one of large mus¬ 
cular development needs to exercise for a 
longer time, or more vigorously than one not 
so developed. A good rule to make, however, 
is always to stop the use of any one set of 
muscles when they begin to feel fatigued. By 
taking your exercise as we suggest, with the 
mind concentrated upon the muscles, ten min¬ 
utes, twice a day, is sufficient. In fact, even 
five minutes twice daily will make a vast dif¬ 
ference in the physical condition of any one. 

Walking is the original, elemental, universal 
exercise of the human race in nature’s gym¬ 
nasium, the great out-of-doors. Walking in¬ 
volves the movement of nearly all the large 
muscles of the body, as well as the smaller ones. 
However, as walking with most of us is purely 
an automatic action, a longer time is required 


134 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


to get the same beneficial effect received by the 
use, for example, of Indian clubs. This may 
be overcome by walking with a springing step, 
thus directing the attention of the brain to the 
muscles that are brought into use. 

In Chapter XXII of this book you will find 
detailed suggestions as to just how to exer¬ 
cise to get the most out of the time you put into 
it—a series of definite daily exercises which 
will increase your physical strength. 

Let us next consider the matter of regular 
rest. Rest is made necessary by fatigue; what 
is fatigue? Fatigue, whether it be mental or 
physical, is simply the sensation which you feel 
when the blood becomes overcharged with 
waste materials. It is nature’s way of telling 
you when it is time to quit working and give 
the body an opportunity to clean up. In the 
fourth chapter, on “Knife and Fork Suicide,” 
we have shown how overeating and wrong eat¬ 
ing cause an excessive amount of waste ma¬ 
terials in the blood. It is true beyond question 
that waste materials from overeating consti¬ 
tute, in the average person, the greater part of 
the total body waste. When this chief cause 
of waste is removed we become fatigued much 


THE BIG FOUR 


135 


less easily. In other words, the reason why 
most people become fatigued as easily as they 
do, in fact, the cause for that “chronic tired 
feeling,” is that the body is overcharged with 
unnecessary food-poisoning. Eliminate this 
source of waste material and you eliminate one- 
half of the fatigue; you increase your working 
power, and decrease very materially the need 
for rest. 

It is a positive fact that as the average work 
goes from day to day, people become tired at 
their tasks largely because of food-poisoning 
and poor elimination due to bad hygiene. So 
it is that if you will eat carefully, take only 
easily digested food and only the amount of 
food that you actually need, keep your skin in 
active condition, take a little systematic phys¬ 
ical exercise every day, and get sufficient fresh 
air, you will find that you can do a tremendous 
amount of work without getting tired. This 
is especially true of brain work. 

However, fatigue will come sooner or later, 
and when it does come it must be heeded . In 
fact, our work should be so divided, our day 
should be so ordered, that we anticipate fatigue 
and take sufficient rest before we become actu- 


136 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ally tired. In this way we can always keep our 
work up to the highest standard. Every one 
knows that, as he begins to tire, his work is of 
poor quality; he becomes less efficient. Conse¬ 
quently, it is true economy of time to take a 
breathing spell, and let down the tension be¬ 
fore we get tired. 

If you are eating correctly, if the body ma¬ 
chine is tuned up in good shape, you will be 
surprised to see how easily you will recuperate, 
how quickly you will become rested. A few 
minutes’ rest at noon will leave you nearly as 
fresh as you began in the morning. When you 
are working hard, short rests of a minute or 
two during the day will relieve to a surprising 
degree the tired brain and muscles. 

Rest for the brain worker means, in part, a 
change of occupation, or change of work. 
Anything which uses the muscles draws the 
blood away from the tired brain cells, and car¬ 
ries it vigorously around through the lungs 
and kidneys where it is cleaned of its fatigue 
poisons. Thus physical exercise rests the brain. 
It is beyond doubt true that physical exercise 
increases your brain power; so the brain worker 
must do a certain amount of physical work 


THE BIG FOUR 


187 


every day in order to keep his brain output up 
to the maximum in quality and quantity. 

Rockefeller attributed much of his success to 
the fact that he regularly rested for five min¬ 
utes in the middle of every day. It is said that 
he had a couch in his private office, and that 
with his accustomed punctuality, at a certain 
time each day he would lie down and lose him¬ 
self for five minutes. It is easy to form the 
habit of sleeping for just a few minutes at a 
time, and after one has formed this habit, if 
he sleeps no longer than five minutes, he will 
be surprised to find how refreshed he is when 
he awakens. Ten minutes spent in rest at noon 
will add twenty per cent, to the afternoon’s effi¬ 
ciency. Add to this a light lunch instead of the 
heavy meal, leave off the after-lunch cigar, and 
you will take the drag out of the afternoon; 
you will go right through to five o’clock with 
plenty of pep and punch. You don’t need a 
couch for the after-lunch forty winks; you can 
simply tilt back on your chair or lean forward 
with your head on the desk. The habit is very 
easily formed; try it. 

Cut out the night work . Our practical work¬ 
ing schedules in Chapter XXIV do not include 


138 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


any time for work after six P. m. Night work is 
the poorest sort of economy; in fact, it is real 
extravagance of time and energy. Working at 
night rapidly cuts down a man’s efficiency, and 
takes the punch out of his day work. Ex¬ 
haustive tests have shown that a man will actu¬ 
ally accomplish more in a week by working 
only eight or nine hours during the day, than 
by adding two or three hours at night. After 
five-thirty or six o’clock is the time for your 
recreation. 

This brings us to the matter of sleep. Let 
us begin by saying that we don’t believe in the 
Big Ben habit. Sleep is a period of elimina¬ 
tion, of recuperation, and, more important, of 
tissue rebuilding. While we are asleep most 
of the waste materials are carried out of the 
body. In the case of the hearty eater, the man 
who takes considerably more food that he 
needs, or in the man who doesn’t digest nearly 
all the food he eats, there is, of course, an 
excessive amount of this waste, and an addi¬ 
tional amount of sleep is needed to carry it off; 
otherwise, the man will suffer from auto¬ 
intoxication. It is said that Edison sleeps but 
two or three hours a day. At the same time 


THE BIG FOUR 


139 


Edison tells us that he is a very light eater. 
He takes hut two meals daily, with rarely any 
meat. This is the secret of Edison’s need for 
little sleep. 

Our rule for sleeping is this: Get as much 
sleep as your hody seems to call for. If you 
are a hearty eater, and feel that the pleasures 
at the table are paramount, get all the sleep 
you can. The more you are able to take, the 
better your system will withstand your habits 
of eating. On the other hand, if your time is 
too valuable to spend in unnecessary sleep, 
then look well to your food. But remember 
that to shorten your sleeping hours arbitrarily, 
without decreasing your actual need for sleep, 
is to invite physical bankruptcy. 

So, if you wish to cut down your sleep, eat 
lightly and carefully, as we indicate in Chap¬ 
ter XXI. Take your hearty meal at night, 
with little or no lunch at noon. Retire early, 
but before retiring rub the body thoroughly 
with a dry towel, and take ten minutes’ physi¬ 
cal exercise with the skin exposed to the air 
(see Chapter XIX). Sleep in a well-venti¬ 
lated room, or better still, on a sleeping porch. 
Do this; then sleep until you awaken volun- 


140 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tarily. You may be certain that you will not 
only sleep well, but that nature will call you 
early. Best of all, you will have that get-up- 
and-get-at-it feeling; you won’t have that im¬ 
pulse to choke the alarm and turn over for an¬ 
other snooze. 

The third member of our physical Big Four 
is fresh air. Develop the fresh-air habit. In 
these days of high-priced living, fresh air is 
the only valuable thing that doesn’t cost real 
money. As far as possible when you are in¬ 
doors, have plenty of ventilation in your office 
and in your living-room. Of course, in the 
winter this ventilation increases the coal bill, 
but it is cheaper than the big doctor bills that 
bad air costs. Our winter colds, our spring 
breakdowns, much of the nervous prostration, 
rheumatism, and various other disorders are in 
part bad-air diseases. They don’t overtake 
folks who have the fresh-air habit. 

In summer, most of us get sufficient fresh 
air. It is in winter that we live largely on 
second-hand air. Many big factories and 
many offices have found that efficient ventilat¬ 
ing systems are paying big dividends in in¬ 
creased output. If, in every office and in every 


THE BIG FOUR 


141 


household, it was a regular habit to open wide 
the windows every three hours or even three 
times daily, and allow a complete change of air, 
our winter ills would be cut down fifty per 
cent., and our working power increased accord¬ 
ingly. The most modern assembly halls and 
auditoriums have a complete change of air ev¬ 
ery four minutes. Every office man should 
combine exercise and fresh air in brisk walks 
morning, noon and night. The most important 
of these is the noon walk; and when you are 
out, especially in the winter-time, breathe 
deeply, get all of the old air out of the lungs, 
fill them with fresh air and charge the blood 
with plenty of life-giving oxygen. 

Outdoor sleeping helps much to solve the 
fresh-air problem of the indoor man. If you 
can’t get fresh air during the eight hours that 
you spend in your office, if you can’t get as 
much as you ought to have in your living-room 
at other times, you can get your share at night 
if you sleep out-of-doors. Furthermore, if one 
prepares properly for outdoor sleeping, he will 
really enjoy it. In winter, heavy night cloth¬ 
ing is needed, including a snugly fitted cap 
over the head and part of the face, and sleeping 


142 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


sox on the feet. The outdoor sleeper must 
have plenty of bed clothing over him, and, just 
as necessary, a layer or two of building paper 
should be laid between the springs and the mat¬ 
tress to keep the cold air from coming up from 
below. Artificial heat in the bed is also neces¬ 
sary in extreme weather. A practical and con¬ 
venient method is to fill a half-gallon jug with 
boiling water, tie the cork in, and insulate it 
by wrapping it in a bathtowel or an equivalent 
covering. Prepared in this way, it will remain 
warm and “comfy” all night long, in any 
weather. Sleeping in the fresh air is more rest¬ 
ful and more enjoyable than indoors, and less 
sleep is actually needed. 

This brings us to the last, but one of the 
most important factors in the development of 
mental and physical efficiency and the attain¬ 
ment of real success. This factor is recreation 
—play. There never was anything more true 
than the old saying, “All work and no play 
makes Jack a dull hoy.” A large percentage 
of all the men who have succeeded, who have 
“arrived,” a good part of the men who are 
doing the world’s big jobs to-day, are men who 
take regular time for play. Play is just as 


THE BIG FOUR 


143 


essential as work to one’s success. It is the 
letting go and grabbing again with a harder 
hold that really makes for the greatest achieve¬ 
ment. 

“But,” you may say, “I have no time for 
play, if I am going to win in this day of keen 
competition, I have to keep everlastingly at 
it.” This is a mistake. The man who has a 
daily time for play not only works many years 
longer, lasts many more years, but he actually 
does more work. Resting the brain, resting 
the muscles, resting one’s faculties, relaxing 
completely, “forgetting it” for a few hours, 
puts your brain, your thinking powers and 
your muscles in better condition; and when you 
get back at it you can do far better work, and 
do far more work, than you can without the 
daily play. 

Again you will say, “I get my play out of 
my work; there isn’t anything in life that I 
enjoy quite as much as the things that I am 
doing, the things that mean the most to me.” 
This may be true; we hope it is; we believe that 
real success depends upon this great faculty 
of getting your greatest enjoyment out of 
your work; but even if this be true, it will pay 


144 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


you to play a while every day, because after 
you play you can do so much better work. 
Every well ordered life has a time for recrea¬ 
tion. In the latter part of this book in the 
schedules for different persons we have in¬ 
cluded time for the daily recreation. 

Of course the time that offers the best oppor¬ 
tunity for recreation is the evening, after the 
day’s work is done. In summer it should in¬ 
clude something that takes us out-of-doors into 
the fresh air. Summer-time affords many 
chances for outdoor evening recreation—an 
auto ride, or better, a walk in the park, an hour 
or so of work in the garden or on the lawn, or 
a game of tennis; but by all means take your 
recreation out-of-doors. 

In the winter it is even more important than 
in the summer that one get his recreation out- 
of-doors. The fact is, however, that we usually 
go to the theater, the movie, or to a social func¬ 
tion, or spend the evening in reading. How 
much better to spend a half-hour in a brisk 
walk, either before or after the evening recrea¬ 
tion. 

And remember that play, to be real play, 


THE BIG FOUR 


145 


can’t be done alone; you must have company. 
So make your recreation something that will 
include your wife and family, or if you don’t 
happen to have either of these, a friend or two. 
You will get a great deal more out of your 
play if you have some one to play with you. 

Just the other day I examined a man sixty- 
six years old. He came in “just to be looked 
over”; he didn’t think there was anything the 
matter with him, and there wasn’t. He told me 
that he hadn’t had a vacation in forty-two 
years, and that during that time he had not lost 
a day at the office, and that this was a record 
that was not equaled by any other employee of 
the concern who took regular vacations. 

This might seem to be evidence that vaca¬ 
tions are not essential. Such is not, however, 
an inevitable conclusion. It is rather an argu¬ 
ment against the way vacations are usually 
spent. Most people think they are not having 
a good time on a vacation unless they abuse 
their health in some way. In summer our 
evening recreation is spoiled with a cigar or 
two, or a soda-fountain decoction which upsets 
the dinner digestion. The evening at cards is 


146 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

usually followed by a lunch which is indiges¬ 
tible. Not infrequently the two or three hours 
are spent in tobacco-laden air. 

When a man goes on a fishing trip, he usu¬ 
ally has in his basket a bottle or two and a box 
of cigars, which rob him of much of the good 
the trip holds for him. During the summer, 
how many people are sick on Monday, after a 
Sunday trip to the mountains, or to the coun¬ 
try, or the seashore. They will usually tell 
you it was the water they drank, or the “bright 
sun”; they forget the cake and pickles and 
indigestible sandwiches in the lunch basket, 
and the iced drink after they arrived. Sum¬ 
mer resorts that set a big table are the most 
popular, which accounts for the fact that no 
small percentage of the people who come back 
from their summer vacations have an attack of 
fall illness. When you take your play and 
your rest, let your stomach and your body rest 
also. Make a particular effort at that time to 
take good care of your human machine, and 
you will get the full benefit of your play. 

Don’t forget the playtime. Every one, even 
the overworked housewife, should have one 
full day in the week, or two half-days, without 


THE BIG FOUR 


147 


work. In addition to this, the Saturday after¬ 
noon holiday, if spent rightly, is a health and 
efficiency promoter. Then add a week or two 
or longer out of every year for a real vacation, 
spent out-of-doors, minus the cigars, minus the 
stuffing, and filled with plenty of fresh air and 
wholesome exercise. Don’t forget that play is 
just as important to your success as work. As 
we said before, it is the let-go-and-rest-a- 
minute, and the grab-hold-that-much-harder, 
that in the end will take you over the top easily. 

The man who has his “Big Four”—System¬ 
atic Exercise, Regular Rest, Fresh Air and 
Play—on the job and working for him all of 
the time, has taken a long, long step toward 
emancipation from his physical limitations. 
They will serve him better than all the doc¬ 
tors and all the medicine in the world. They 
will achieve for him the terms of a victorious 
peace, in which he will be free, with his physical 
machine running smoothly and well, to go for¬ 
ward to the highest conquests of which the 
human kind is capable in the realm of develop¬ 
ment. 


CHAPTER X 


YOUR VIEW-POINT 

“It’s all in the way you look at it.” Many 
and many a time we have heard that saying, 
without letting the full significance of it sink 
into our minds. I stood, one glorious July 
day, in a deep mountain canyon. At my feet 
a dashing mountain torrent tumbled and 
foamed in its mad rush over the giant rocks. 
As I looked across the surging sea of foam, 
and listened to the thunderous music of the 
rolling waters, I thought, “What power—what 
bigness is here!” Ear above me, clear-cut 
against the sky-line, I saw a balanced rock, 
seemingly no larger than a man’s hand, and 
the thought came to me, “I would like to roll 
that little rock down here and see this mighty 
stream roll it down the canyon like a pebble.” 
Hours later I stood in the shadow of that rock, 
on the mountain’s crest, and gazed in awe at 
its huge walls of granite, towering far above 
my head. Far below me, I saw the mountain 


148 


YOUR VIEW-POINT 


149 

stream, now shrunk to the size of a slender sil¬ 
ver thread, almost lost in the depths, and I 
thought, “What a difference the point of view 
makes.” 

But the physical view-point, applied to ma¬ 
terial objects, is not half so important as the 
mental view-point. And these view-points 
vary even more widely. We have “many men 
of many minds,” but after all, the determining 
factor of a man’s mind is his view-point. 

It was New Year’s Eve. The lobby of a big 
Denver hotel was filled with men, lounging, 
smoking and chatting together in little groups 
of two or three. “Well, Bill,” said a jovial- 
looking man with a close-cropped gray mus¬ 
tache, “what do you think of the prospects for 
the New Year?” 

The younger man addressed as “Bill,” 
growled: “Bum prospect; bad as last year, and 
maybe worse. War conditions and high prices, 
and rotten business, and then the ‘flu’ to cap 
the climax* Can you beat it, Jim?” 

The other man laughed and clapped him on 
the back. “Brace up, you old pessimist. The 
war is over and the ‘flu’ is on the run. Don’t 
gloom around in the past, look ahead. Nine- 


150 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


teen hundred nineteen is dead and gone now. 
Let’s buckle into 1920.” 

Bill shook his head despondently. “Trouble 
enough when it gets here. I hate to see it 
come. I tell you, business is going to be rot¬ 
ten. Why, look how it has been the last four 
months: everything upset, everybody sick, 
and—” 

The other man sprang to his feet, waving a 
protesting hand. “Forget it, Bill, forget it! 
Nineteen-nineteen is ancient history and 1920 
is going to be the biggest year yet, chuck full 
of chances for a man who keeps his eyes open. 
Let’s go for a walk and see if you can’t walk 
some of the grouch out of your system.” 

After they had gone, a gentleman who had 
overheard the conversation, remarked to his 
friend: “The old man is really the younger of 
the two, and I tell you he will accomplish more 
yet, in spite of his years. He has the Forward 
Look.” 

“The Forward Look!” What a world of 
meaning is packed in that short phrase. Thou¬ 
sands of men and women just at this time are 
turning their faces toward the new year; some 
bravely and hopefully, others >vearily and de-* 


YOUR VIEW POINT 


151 


spondently; but in every mind is the thought, 
“What will 1921 have in store for me?” The 
answer depends entirely upon the individual. 
Bill and Jim are two common types of human¬ 
ity, and each has a multitude of followers. 
Blessed is he who has the forward look, who 
hails the new year with a cheer, believing that 
it is going to be the best yet. 

The forward look is a hopeful look. It is 
potent with vision power which enables a man 
to keep his eyes open and grasp new oppor¬ 
tunities. The man without the forward look 
sees only lost opportunities, catches no vision 
of coming possibilities, no gleam of a new 
dawn. His future lies behind him. He ex¬ 
pects the worst, and he generally gets it. 

You will say that Jim and Bill are radically 
different types, and that between the two a 
great gulf is fixed; that they have nothing in 
common. In reality they have everything 
in common. The vast difference is simply a 
difference in Mental Attitude . Bill’s attitude 
is negative. He has suspicions of everybody, 
views everything with distrust. He sees only 
the hole in the doughnut. No matter what 
good thing may come up, he is constitutionally 


152 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


“ag’in 5 it.” In the end he degenerates into 
what Elbert Hubbard used to call a “belli- 
aker.” 

On the other hand, Jim’s attitude is positive. 
He has faith in himself and other people. He 
expects the best and generally finds it. He is 
confident that the New Year is going to be 
“the best yet.” Always hopeful, courageous 
and cheerful, his mental attitude toward life 
is that of the man who faces the sun with both 
hands wide open for all the blessings that life 
can give, and by the power of right thinking, 
by the constructive, positive attitude of his 
mind he attracts to himself the blessings that 
he desires. Always the greenest sod of the 
earth is just under his feet, the highest spot in 
the heavens directly over his head. 

Everywhere men are coming to realize that 
the attitude of the mind has much to do with 
the health of the body. This fact is recognized, 
not alone by leading physicians and men of 
science, but by psychologists and men of busi¬ 
ness. Stanley Krebs has a powerful lecture, 
“Two Snakes in the Business Brain,” which 
he designates as “Fear” and “Worry”; but the 
man with the forward look fills his mind so 


YOUR VIEW-POINT 


153 


full of “Hope” and “Faith” that the snakes are 
soon crowded out. Scientific laboratory tests 
prove that even a dog will not digest his meal 
when worried. 

Strangely enough, some people seem to pre¬ 
fer the negative attitude and take great satis¬ 
faction, apparently, in dwelling on the gloomy 
side of things. They hate to admit that any¬ 
thing is good or growing better. They are 
like the old lady who was congratulated on her 
improved appearance and replied, “Yes, I am 
some better than I wuz, but I am not as well as 
I hev been.” But those who have an honest 
desire to change their negative conditions can 
come out into the wholesome sunlight simply 
by reversing their mental attitude . Not only 
individuals, but, in many cases, entire families 
have been known completely to reverse their 
condition by reversal of their thought. What 
a wonderful thing it is to face the world and 
stand erect, “four-square” to every wind that 
blows. Plow much better than to stand with 
“one foot in the grave” and the other on a 
banana peel. 

A world full of opportunities lies open to 
all of us, but we do not all look at it in the same 


154 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


way. Some are looking backward instead of 
forward; some look down, while others look up. 

“Two men looked out from the prison bars— 

One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.” 

Back of the bars which we call chance, or 
fate, or luck, or environment, or circumstance, 
we all stand, wondering what we shall get out 
of the new year. The answer is simple: We 
shall get out of it the measure we put into it. 
And we shall put into it, each of us, according 
to his mental attitude. 

Many men of many minds have many view¬ 
points of Life—Religion, Business and Work. 
One measures life by what he can get out of it, 
another by what he puts into it. The first 
measures success by his income; the second 
measures it by his outgo or overflow. Brown 
views religion as an impractical dream of an 
unknown future, while his friend White re¬ 
gards it as a means of “life more abundant” 
in the living present. Equally do the view¬ 
points of business vary. My neighbor, who 
drudges at his business and finds no joy in it, 
has a very narrow conception of business. His 
boundary lines are limited and cramped. In 


YOUR VIEW-POINT 


155 


his mind it is bounded something like this: 
bounded on the East by the Alarm Clock, on 
the West by Quitting Time, on the North by 
the Last Pay-day, and on the South by the 
Next Pay-day. 

When I use the word “business,” I use it in 
its fullest, broadest sense. Times have changed 
and in these modern days we need a new defi¬ 
nition of “business”—a definition bigger, 
broader, better. We are getting away from 
the old, narrow, sweat-shop ideas and old- 
fashioned cutthroat methods of business. My 
conception of business is not of something sor¬ 
did and selfish, mercenary and miserly, greedy 
and grasping. My conception of business is of 
something teeming with opportunities, big 
with possibilities, throbbing with human in¬ 
terest. 

I see it as a rich and costly fabric, weaving 
on the loom of modern commerce; and as the 
bright shuttle of achievement flashes in and 
out, I see the web grow and the pattern is com¬ 
pleted, shot through and through with the 
golden threads of human efficiency. 

One of our ablest executives, who is a figure 
of national prominence, said a striking thing 


156 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


recently. He said: “In winning Success, un¬ 
der modern conditions, a man’s business atti¬ 
tude counts more than his business ability.” 
But most important of all, it seems to me, is a 
man’s attitude toward his life-work. Here we 
find two extreme view-points. All admit that 
we are living in a strenuous time, that compe¬ 
tition is keen, that men are straining every 
nerve to keep pace with the rush and whirl of 
a commercial age—that a man simply must 
hustle or become a back number. 

What are we going to do about it? That is 
the vital question. Some take the view that 
the game is not worth the candle, refuse to 
hustle, give up their ambition to climb the 
heights, and remain contentedly on the low 
levels of mediocrity. Others are not content 
to remain at the bottom, not content with a 
bare living, not content with mediocre achieve¬ 
ments. So these struggle and strive to fight 
their way above the bread-and-butter line— 
work hard to rise above the ordinary, and 
achieve something in life well worth while. 
They will to win success at any price, will to do 
something big, regardless of the cost. No 


YOUR VIEW-POINT 


157 


matter what the wear and tear may be on body, 
brain and soul, they “take it on high,” even 
if it wrecks the whole machine. These are the 
two extreme view-points and neither is right. 
Here is the Big Idea—the idea back of this 
book, the central idea which runs like a thread 
of gold through every chapter— Take it on 
high , but learn how to do it with ease! 

Master the laws of efficiency so you can do 
big things without strain. Learn how to run 
your machine without wear and tear. Con¬ 
serve your physical and mental forces so intelli¬ 
gently that you do not exhaust your reserves. 
To accomplish more with less effort, that is 
the ultimate goal. 

It is possible to do big things in a big way 
without tearing yourself to pieces. Don’t be 
content to play “second fiddle.” Don’t give 
up your ambition for fear you can’t stand the 
strain. Don’t go to the other extreme and 
wreck yourself in a mad rush for success. You 
need not pursue either course. 

Two men were arguing whether it was bet¬ 
ter to be a big toad in a small puddle or a small 
toad in a big puddle. But while they were at 


158 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


it, another man quietly prepared himself to 
“take it on high” and became a big toad in a 
big puddle. 

It’s all in the state of mind, the mental atti¬ 
tude. The average man can do far more than 
he has ever done; he has barely touched his 
latent powers. If only he knew how to use his 
force he could take the hills on high with ease, 
and glory in his strength, as a strong man re¬ 
joices to run a race and suffers no harm from 
the running. 

Get the right view-point. 


“If you think you are beaten, you are; 

If you think you dare not, you don’t; 

If you like to win but you think you can’t, 
It is almost certain you won’t. 

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost; 

For out in the world you’ll find 
Success begins with a fellow's will 
It’s all in the state of mind. 

“If you think you’re outclassed, you are; 
You’ve got to think high to rise; 

You’ve got to be sure of yourself before 
You can ever win a prize. 

Life’s battles don’t always go 
To the strongest and fastest man; 

'But soon or late the man who wins 
Is the one who thinks he can.” 


CHAPTER XI 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 

The average man does not use his head for 
half what it is worth. He realizes this in a 
general sort of way, but takes no definite steps 
to develop his brain power. Nowadays, as of 
old, the race is to the swift—the battle to the 
strong—but the battle of life to-day is waged 
with the brain for a weapon. 

Head work is what counts. Some one has 
said that a man is worth about two dollars a 
day from his chin down, and two hundred dol¬ 
lars a day from his chin up. He may he as 
strong as a mule, and as stubborn, but he will 
not get very far unless there is a good brain 
back of his efforts. The newsboy out at the 
stockyards made a remark during a recent 
stock show which hit the nail on the head. The 
boy had a trained dog and he was entertaining 
the crowd by putting the dog through a series 
of tricks. By and by, a big burly man with a 
bull neck and a red nose elbowed his way into 


159 


160 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the crowd. He was one of these fat, pompous, 
flat-top-headed fellows with a big* bay-window 
in front. Looking at him, any one would find 
it easy to believe in the Darwinian theory. In 
fact, a discriminating observer would arrive at 
the conclusion that he had not only started on 
his journey from the monkey, but that he had a 
round trip ticket and had started on the return 
trip. He stood watching the clever perform¬ 
ance of the dog for a few minutes, and then 
having more money than anything else, he said, 
“Hey, Kid, what will you take for him?” 

The boy shook his head, “Don’t want to sell 
him, Mister.” 

“Oh, yes, you do,” and he thrust a twenty- 
dollar bill into the boy’s hand and led the dog 
away before the dazed boy recovered his wits. 
But the next day, the pompous one came back, 
roughly dragging the dog with him. 

“Here, Kid, your dog is no good—take him 
back and give me my money.” But the boy had 
both arms around his pet’s neck and paid no 
attention. “I tell you, he’s no good—I tried 
him out and he wouldn’t do a single trick.” 

For answer, the boy turned to the dog with 
a low whistle and at the signal the dog repeated 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 161 


his performance of the day before without a 
fault, while an admiring crowd gathered. 

The man shook his head and said, “Well, lie 
wouldn’t do anything for me.” 

The boy looked up with a twinkle in his eye 
and said, “Well, you see, Mister, you've got to 
know more than the dog.” 

This is an age of complex high-power ma¬ 
chinery, but no modern machinery can ever 
equal the marvelous mechanism of the human 
brain. The man who has a ninety horse-power 
brain must know how to care for it and how to 
run it. But first he must develop it. Why is 
it that a brain of this high power is so rare? 
Chiefly because so few men give any time or 
attention to the cultivation of the mind—so few 
follow any intelligent system of brain develop¬ 
ment—so few persistently do those things, day 
by day, which lead to better brain action—so 
few form the student habit . We are living in 
a commercial age and men are chasing the 
Almighty Dollar so hard and fast that they 
neglect their own self-development. They 
concentrate everything on building new busi¬ 
ness, but nothing on building new brain cells. 
But is it not a mistake to give so much atten- 


162 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tion to the business and so little to the man 
behind the business? Certainly the size of that 
business in the long run will be measured by 
the size of the man back of it. I believe it was 
Emerson who said that a great institution is 
but the lengthened shadow of one man. 

The time has come when men must give seri¬ 
ous attention to brain building for business. 
I say brain building advisedly, for it is 'possible 
to build new brain cells. I know that many 
people believe that “it can’t be done,” especially 
in the case of adults. There is a popular de¬ 
lusion that the brain power of a grown man 
is a fixed quantity, that when people grow up 
they are doomed to go through life with the 
same amount of brains. Absolutely false! 

Building new brain cells is a scientific fact . 
Modern psychology points the way for the man 
who is willing to learn and furnishes the prin¬ 
ciples which he can use to build upon as a solid 
foundation. I do not make this statement 
without abundant proof to support my asser¬ 
tion. Take down from the shelves of your 
library, if you will, the volumes of James and 
Munsterburg, or of any other master psychol¬ 
ogist. Read them, and after wading through 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 163 


a mass of impractical material as far as your 
work is concerned—pages of psychic phe¬ 
nomena, theoretical therapeutics—you will find 
a few great fundamental principles which are 
eminently practical for you. Out of it all, you 
can sift out the knowledge you need, the points 
which fit your case and, however the authori¬ 
ties may disagree on other points, there are 
three or four fundamentals on which all the 
psychologists—who have any standing with the 
universities—are agreed. So on these princi¬ 
ples you can take your stand and use them as a 
solid foundation for your brain building. 
These three are the A. B. C. of practical psy¬ 
chology. 


1. All conscious sensation, thought and 
feeling are related to, and depend 
upon, nerve action. 

2. Stimuli from the organs of sense, 
passing over the sensory nerves to 
the brain, discharge through the mo¬ 
tor nerves, resulting in thought, feel¬ 
ing, or action. 

3. All acts, thoughts and feelings, 
which are persisted in, establish nerve 
centers and paths in the brain, which 
become the physical basis of subse¬ 
quent thought and conduct. 


164 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

Now, there is nothing very abstruse or hard 
to understand in these laws—no mystery about 
them—all very simple. Let us pause for a mo¬ 
ment to define and analyze our proposition. 

What is meant by “stimuli”? Simply the 
effect produced on the senses by physical 
waves, such as air waves, light waves, heat 
waves, etc. As for the sensory and motor 
nerves, just think of them as two telegraph 
wires, each for a separate purpose; one to 
carry a message to the brain, the other to 
flash back the answer. Suppose you should 
touch your finger to a red-hot stove, what 
would happen? Instantly the sensory nerves 
or wire would send a message of pain to the 
brain and quicker than a flash the brain would 
send back a command to remove your finger 
from the danger. So incredibly swift is the 
action that it seems hard to believe that all this 
takes place before you jerk your finger away 
from the stove, but such is the case and the 
“stimuli” have become ancient history before 
you can emit the first “cuss word.” 

It is strange how slow people are to believe 
that it is possible to develop new brain cells. 
They will readily admit that it is possible to 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 165 


develop new muscle by persisting in certain 
physical exercises, but they are skeptical about 
“growing brains.” As a matter of fact brain 
cells can be developed as readily as muscle, and 
both respond to the same laws. 

Use means growth —non-use leads to weak¬ 
ness and decay. Many experiments have been 
conducted to demonstrate that brain building is 
a scientific fact. Chief among these, are the 
experiments of Professor Elmer Gates on the 
brain cells in man and animals. 

In every case he found these cells susceptible 
to training . One of the most remarkable of 
his experiments was made with seven shepherd 
puppies. Two of them were kept in a dark 
room from the day of their birth, where no ray 
of light ever entered their eyes. Two were sent 
out on a farm, where they lived the ordinary 
dog’s life. 

But the other three were put under special 
training to develop the sense of color—to dis¬ 
tinguish between different hues, shades and 
tints of color. They were trained for several 
hours daily and by different methods. The 
most striking method used was as follows: A 
hall, about fifty feet long and three feet wide, 


166 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


was carpeted with copper plates. These plates 
were of various colors and were so connected 
with copper induction coil that a current of 
electricity could be passed through them. 
At first the electric current was turned on 
so that the plates of all colors but one were 
charged. Then they made the puppies travel 
from one end of the hall to the other and every 
time a pup stepped on the wrong color he got 
a shock that made his toes tingle. They soon 
learned that one color was safe. Then the cur¬ 
rent was switched and a different color was 
selected, and the poor pup had a new lesson to 
learn. But the result of this training was mar¬ 
velous. The pups soon learned to distinguish 
all colors and hundreds of shades and tints of 
color. At the end of twelve months the test 
was concluded and the dogs were all chloro¬ 
formed. 

Then a scientific examination was made in 
the laboratory, of the sight region of their 
brains in the back part of the cerebrum. 

In the case of the dogs that had been kept in 
the dark room, they found absolutely no more 
development than in a new-born puppy. The 
dogs that had lived on the farm had the sight 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 167 


regions of their brains much more highly de¬ 
veloped than those that had never seen a ray 
of light. The internal structure was different 
and a greater number of brain cells were de¬ 
veloped. In their sight regions they had an 
average of eighty-nine well developed cells per 
square millimeter. These dogs had been using 
their faculties out on the farm; they had 
learned the difference between the gray light 
of dawn and the dusky shade of twilight; they 
had learned the color of the cornstalk and the 
tree trunk, and to detect the brown coat of the 
rabbit outlined against the snow. But the sur¬ 
prise came when examination was made of the 
three dogs that had received the special 
training. 

They found their sight regions as well de¬ 
veloped as those of the human brain. The 
chemical compounds of the cells were more 
complex and they had twelve hundred cells to 
the square millimeter of surface. By training, 
Professor Gates gave these dogs more brain 
cells and better brain cells in twelve months 
than nature has given the normal dog in ten 
thousand years! 

Very few of us would be willing to admit 


168 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


that we could not equal a shepherd puppy in 
the development of our brain cells. In fact, the 
boy was absolutely right when he said, “You’ve 
got to know more than the dog.” 

Referring to our third principle, we find how 
habits are formed. As we persist in certain 
actions or lines of thought, we establish nerve 
centers. These centers are formed by cells hav¬ 
ing a similar function to perform. In time 
these form a physical basis for all subsequent 
thought and action, until finally we have a 
brain path. Then as we travel this path day 
after day, the groove is worn deeper and 
deeper, until at last it is clear cut and sharply 
defined and we have formed a habit. 

After much travel, the brain path becomes 
fixed and we have a life habit. When perma¬ 
nence is established, it becomes easy for us to 
reproduce the same thought or action. We say 
it has become “second nature to us.” We can 
do it “unconsciously,” “without thinking.” 
The violinist furnishes a striking example of 
this law. At first, he must think of several 
things at once and his task is most difficult. 
He must read the notes of the music before 
him, he must make his own finger-board as he 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 169 


plays, and at the same time he must give atten¬ 
tion to the bowing—most difficult of all. So 
his execution as an amateur is slow and awk¬ 
ward, his playing full of discord. But, by and 
by, he establishes certain brain paths and then, 
and not until then, can he secure the coordina¬ 
tion necessary to play smoothly. 

Then, at last comes the day when he is able 
to sweep the strings with the hand of a master. 
He reads without effort the notes before him, 
he does not need to watch his fingering or think 
of his bowing, yet all is perfect, for it is habit 
developed through long hours of regular faith¬ 
ful practise; and now he tucks the violin under 
his chin and calls forth melody divine through 
the magic of the bow, his soul intent only on 
the masterpiece he is playing. 

The annals of criminology are full of in¬ 
stances which show the power of habit. “Slip¬ 
pery Jim” Williams was one of the cleverest 
crooks the world has ever seen. He was finally 
caught and sent to prison, where he served 
time for several years. Then he made his 
escape and for years he baffled the detectives of 
two continents. They searched for him far and 
wide, and all the time he was living right in 


170 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


New York City. But at last, in spite of his 
cleverness and iron will-power, the power of 
habit betrayed him in an unguarded moment. 
One day “Slippery Jim” stood watching a 
chain gang go down the street, headed for Sing 
Sing, and as he saw again that peculiar, shuf¬ 
fling lock-step, old memories stirred within 
him. And when he started on, all uncon¬ 
sciously he fell into the old lock-step which he 
had learned so well years before. He had not 
walked any distance before a Pinkerton detec¬ 
tive recognized that step, took him to the sta¬ 
tion, and there found he had caught the no¬ 
torious “Slippery Jim.” He was betrayed by 
a law of his own mind. 

A good story is told of General Joe Wheeler 
—veteran of the Civil War. He entered the 
service again in the Philippines and one day, 
while leading a charge up San Juan Hill, he 
whipped out his sword and called to his men, 
“After ’em, boys! The Yanks are on the run!” 
It had been many a year since he had fought 
the “Yanks,” but that old brain-path was 
working again. 

How vitally important it is for each man to 
give attention to his brain paths, and to form 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 171 


habits that will work for him instead of against 
him. Efficiency habits are just as easy to form 
as inefficiency habits. Every man has the 
power of choice. 

And now we come to the fourth principle 
—upon which all psychologists are agreed. 
Short and simple, but pregnant with meaning, 
just four short words, but they voice the most 
inspiring truth in psychology: Power goes 
where directed . So a man can direct his own 
brain building, develop the new brain cells he 
most needs, turn his very weakness into 
strength! Yes, power goes where directed, 
and choice of direction is so tremendously im¬ 
portant! It determines the career, absolutely, 
of every one of us. Euck or chance, circum¬ 
stance or environment are only trifles. 

“One ship sails East and another West 

By the self-same winds that blow; 

’Tis the set of the sail and not the gale 

That determines the way they go. 

Like the waves of the sea are the ways of 
Fate, 

As we voyage along through Life. 

’Tis the set of the soul that determines the 
goal, 

And not the calm or the strife,” 


172 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Ah, yes! It is the set of your sail, the slant 
of your mind, that fixes your goal, and un¬ 
erringly marks your destination. 

Sometimes I hear a man say, “Well, I guess 
this brain building is all right for young fel¬ 
lows, but an old codger like me can’t develop 
new brain cells.” I say to him, “You are 
wrong. I have frequently had men in my 
classes who were past sixty years of age and 
they not only made rapid progress, but often 
surpassed much younger men in the class. It 
is true that in youth the brain is more plastic 
and the mind more receptive, but no man is 
too old to develop new brain cells as long as 
he honestly desires to learn. Better brain ac¬ 
tion is possible for any man who wants it 
enough to be willing to work for it." 

It is a sad day for us when we stop growing, 
and it is a pitiful thing to see any man indulge 
in the false belief that he is “too old to learn.” 

The older men, with all their ripe experience 
and judgment are needed just as much in the 
world’s work as the younger men with their 
enthusiasm and energy. James J. Hill, the 
empire builder, once uttered a truth so striking 
that it will live as long as the English lan- 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 173 


guage endures. Standing before a great audi¬ 
ence in Minneapolis, he said, with all the ear¬ 
nestness of his conviction: “Old men sell their 
wisdom—young men sell their dreams. Civi¬ 
lization needs both.” 

Young men, who read this, youth is yours, 
and tireless energy and enthusiasm and high 
ideals, but most of all the world needs your 
dreams, your creative visions. Old men, who 
may read this, experience is yours, and cool 
judgment and all the priceless lessons of life 
you have learned and garnered through the 
years, but most of all the world needs the prac¬ 
tical benefit of your wisdom. And just as the 
young man can profit by the wise counsel of 
the older man, he in turn can lean upon the 
buoyant hope and enthusiasm of the young 
man. 

Standing together, they give the most valu¬ 
able service to humanity. “Civilization needs 
both.” 

Every man must do his own brain building; 
no one else can do it for him. Using these 
principles as a solid foundation, each can make 
his own application in a practical way, direct 
his thought force in the line of his ambition and 


174 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


develop his mental faculties to the nth power. 
Better brain action is not an idle dream, it can 
be made a living reality. There is a vast dif¬ 
ference between thinking in circles, and think¬ 
ing in a straight line. When you develop the 
mental habit of straight thinking and put the 
clear-cut, definite, direct drive of a powerful 
brain back of your efforts, you will be able to 
accomplish ten times more than you have ever 
done, to achieve the big things you have 
dreamed about. You will do more and do it 
easier. You will be able to take the hills on 
high without tearing your machine to pieces. 

After all, mind is the engineer. Let us see 
to it that the engineer is on the job. A certain 
hotel proprietor hired a big green Swede for 
a janitor. He warned him that he must rise 
early and begin work every morning at four 
o clock. The second day the Swede was an 
hour late, but gave the excuse that he did not 
know what time it was, as he had no watch. So 
the proprietor gave him an alarm clock, showed 
him how to set it and gave him final warning, 
“The next time you are late I will fire you.” 
All went well for a week and then Larsen 
showed up an hour late. His boss immediately 


BETTER BRAIN ACTION 175 


fired him in spite of his protests that the clock 
had stopped and the alarm did not go off. 
Going back to his room, Larsen dejectedly ex¬ 
amined the alarm clock, then took it apart and 
found a big dead cockroach in the works. 
Rushing excitedly down to his employer, he 
held out the clock and exclaimed, “No wonder 
the clock don’t go—the engineer bane dead.” 

Above all men I take off my hat to the 
Thinker. “The Drudge may fret and tinker, 
or hammer with lusty blows; but back of him 
stands the Thinker—the clear-eyed man who 
knows.” 


CHAPTER XII 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 

There is a certain slang phrase, which is 
very expressive; a phrase often used in times of 
uncertainty: “Where are we at?” This is the 
modern way of expressing in terse form the 
same idea that Daniel Webster had in mind 
when he lifted up his sonorous voice at the 
opening of his famous speech in reply to 
Hayne, and said: “When the Mariner has been 
tossed for many days on stormy seas, he 
naturally avails himself of the first lull in the 
storm, the first glimpse of the sun, to take his 
bearings, and ascertain how far he has drifted 
from his true course.” 

But nowadays, since Daniel has left us, we 
say: “Where are we at?” It’s a mighty good 
question at that, a question that leads us some¬ 
where, and if we get a straight answer, it “gets 
us somewhere.” 

A man generally asks it when he has lost his 
way, mentally, or morally, or physically, or 


176 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 177 


financially. Simeon Ford tells a story that 
describes such a situation. It was a dark and 
stormy night. A man was riding a bicycle out 
on a lonely country road. He rode rapidly and 
with much anxiety, for a big storm was coming 
up, and he feared it would break before he 
could reach the town. At last, he came to a 
fork in the road, but did not know which way 
led to the town. He dismounted but found 
nothing to help him to decide. Then he no¬ 
ticed the dim outline of a tall sign-post at the 
corner, but was unable to read the direction at 
the top. He had only one match, but decided 
to climb the sign-post in the desperate hope 
that he could read the sign by the flicker of his 
last match. Slowly and arduously he climbed, 
gripping the post with his knees as he strug¬ 
gled up. He reached the top, hung on with 
one hand, while with the other he carefully 
scratched his precious match. For a moment it 
sputtered, then flared up, and he read by its 
feeble light, just two words, “Fresh Paint.” 

The wise man does not wait until he is hope¬ 
lessly lost before he takes his bearings. Fre¬ 
quently he consults his compass. The prudent 
business man regularly checks up his accounts 


178 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


and balances his books. The first month of 
the new year is an especially busy one for him. 
At this time every progressive merchant checks 
up on his stock. Each store or shop or factory, 
as the case may be, has been making an in¬ 
ventory. 

Systematically and accurately every item is 
checked and classified, and in the end the mer¬ 
chant knows exactly “where he is at” in regard 
to his stock. It is no longer a matter of esti¬ 
mate or guesswork. He knows definitely —he 
knows what he has on his shelves, and how 
much he has in the warehouse. He knows in 
what lines he is overstocked, and he knows in 
what goods his stock is short. This knowledge 
enables him to plan his business intelligently, 
so he can proceed to push his sales on his over¬ 
supply and to replenish his depleted stocks. 
In this way he is enabled to keep his business 
balance, maintain his efficiency, and continue 
his business growth and expansion. 

No one questions either the necessity or the 
value of a business inventory. 

But why not make a personal inventory? 
Why turn all our attention to the business and 
none to the man behind the business? Which 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 179 


is more important, the business, or the man who 
creates the business? 

I think it is high time for us to direct our 
attention to the man, and that a personal inven¬ 
tory is of inestimable value. 

But this is one of the things each man must 
work out for himself—no one else can do it for 
him—he must work out his own salvation. 
Perhaps that is why the average man dodges 
this issue and never makes a personal in¬ 
ventory. 

When a man makes an honest effort to cor¬ 
rect his faults and improve his methods, he 
takes a long step forward toward the success 
goal. Don’t wait for somebody else to come 
along and analyze your weakness and put his 
finger on your shortcomings—find them for 
yourself. Honest introspection—self-analysis 
—will do it. A few searching, personal ques¬ 
tions, questions so pertinent that they would be 
impertinent if the other fellow asked them, will 
soon show you just “where you are at.” Spend 
ten minutes every morning before breakfast 
asking yourself these questions—and answer¬ 
ing them squarely. Keep this up for six 
months, or even for thirty days, and you will 


180 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


be able to determine definitely what you need 
to do to be saved. 

Is my work really worth doing? If so, am I 
doing it efficiently? 

Do I get pleasure and enjoyment out of my 
daily work? 

Am I thoroughly equipped—well prepared 
for my employment? 

Do I utilize all my spare moments of time? 

Am I “fit” for this day’s work? 

It is not enough to ask these questions—you 
must be square with yourself and insist upon 
an honest answer. Then, knowing just exactly 
what your personal stock of goods is, you can 
begin to replenish—rebuild, reorganize— 
reconstruct. 

If you are overstocked on some things—out 
they go! If you are short on others—supply 
the deficiency! Better to strike a balance now, 
than to be a bankrupt later on! 

This applies equally to the man who is in 
business for himself and the man who is work¬ 
ing for somebody else. In both cases, the self¬ 
questioning method will enable a man to make 
appraisal of his true value. 

The present abnormal labor situation has 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 181 


brought out some very striking incidents. 
Recently a young fellow applied for a job 
and his first question was, “What will you pay 
me?” 

“Well,” said the boss, “I will pay you just 
exactly what you are worth.” 

“No, siree,” was the quick reply, “I won’t 
work for that.” 

P. D. Armour, who employed thousands of 
men during his successful business career, be¬ 
lieved in giving every employee a chance to 
determine his own value. “Yes,” he said once 
to a friend, “I give every man who works for 
me plenty of rope—if he isn’t big enough for 
his job, he soon tangles up in it and trips him¬ 
self, and down he goes; but if he is too big for 
his job, he makes himself a ladder out of that 
rope, and climbs up by it to something bigger.” 

Start your personal inventory this very day! 
Find out just what your working tools are, and 
what they are worth. 

Take stock of your physical equipment . 
TIow about your body? Will it stand the 
stress and strain of all you ought to do? Are 
you making the effort necessary to keep your¬ 
self in first-class physical condition? 


182 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Are you “physically fit” for all emergencies? 

Any weak place in the machine that ought 
to be looked after and repaired? 

Make your inventory from toes to teeth. 

Take stock of your mental equipment. Is 
your brain keen and alert? 

Are you using your head “for all it is 
worth?” 

Is your mental force up to par? 

Are you reading good books which will 
make you stronger in your work? 

Do you attend lectures and study classes 
which will increase your efficiency? Are you 
building any new brain cells? 

Are you wandering in circles, or thinking 
straight to the point? 

Make y 0U r inventory of the brain behind 
your business. 

In most cases a man’s capital is tied up in 
himself. Especially is this true of the pro¬ 
fessional man. All his natural ability, his 
acquired knowledge, his special training, make 
up his capital. They represent what he has 
invested in himself. They are his most valu¬ 
able assets. 

Isn’t it true that when you add to your 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 183 


knowledge of your business, or to your skill 
and efficiency in your profession, that you have 
added just that much to your capital? 

If you can increase your efficiency enough 
to add even ten dollars a month to your salary 
(which any man can do) you have added tw T o 
thousand dollars to your capital. Ten dollars 
a month represents six per cent, interest on two 
thousand, and it is the best security in the 
world. Self-investment is always safest, be¬ 
cause no one can take it away from you but 
yourself. 

Think it over, and ask yourself if your capi¬ 
tal is any bigger to-day than it was a year ago. 
A little personal introspection of this kind 
will be to you what accurate bookkeeping is to 
a merchant. If you give yourself an honest 
answer, you will sometimes find that your ap¬ 
praisal value has dropped down to about “fried 
zero,” as our friend Togo would say. But it 
is worth trying. Begin to-day to get better 
acquainted with the man under your hat. Talk 
it over with yourself. And in these little talks 
ask yourself some straight questions and insist 
on straight answers. Socrates became the 
wisest man in Greece by asking questions* 


184 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

Some questions bring an answer that is illumi¬ 
nating. 

What is holding me back? 

That is the question many an ambitious man 
asks himself when the truth comes home to him 
that he is not making satisfactory progress. 

And in these soul-searching moments which 
occur in the lives of people who are honest with 
themselves, the answer to this question is 
vitally important. In many cases a man is held 
back by some dead weight which slows up his 
speed, some unnecessary handicap which im¬ 
pedes his progress. 

When a runner strips for the race, he casts 
off his heavy clothing and goes on the track in 
a light-weight running suit made for the pur¬ 
pose. The traveler, who would go fast and far, 
travels light. The soldier on a long hard march 
carries no surplus baggage. When the aero¬ 
naut feels his balloon sinking dangerously fast, 
he throws the ballast overboard. The swimmer 
who battles for his life in the sea casts off shoes, 
clothing, unbuckles the belt which holds his 
jewels—lets all go. The miner lost in the des¬ 
ert throws away his sack of gold dust, his gems, 
every ounce of treasure which burdens him, as 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 185 


he struggles on in search of the life-giving 
water-hole. 

From all these a lesson can be learned, a 
lesson that applies to all who run the race of 
life or battle for existence. 

If you would make better progress, throw 
off that which hinders; cast aside the surplus 
baggage; eliminate your particular handicap. 

Elimination is the key which may unlock the 
closed door of your problem, the answer to that 
searching personal question, what is holding 
me back? 

A personal inventory will help you to find 
the starting point. 

Many a man realizes that he is not forging 
ahead as he should—knows that he is falling 
far short of the goal of his ambitions—honestly 
feels that he is entitled to a bigger place in the 
world and wonders why he has not gained it. 
He works hard, has good habits, lives within 
his income, and apparently has every qualifi¬ 
cation for success and every reason to expect it 
in much larger measure, but somehow the 
months go by and the years roll around and he 
doesn’t get ahead—he is just “getting by.” 

Somewhere there is a reason . 


186 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Hunt for the handicap . 

And when you find it, cast it off—forever! 

“Yes,” said the proprietor of a big store, 
“Brown is a capable fellow, but he always car¬ 
ries a grouch around with him that weighs a 
ton. I keep him on the payroll because he 
knows his business, but he never makes any 
friends for the house, and a man like that never 
goes any higher with me.” 

“Cut out” the grouch, Brown. 

“That’s the third stroke of bad luck I’ve had 
this year,” complained a professional man. 

“Bad luck, nothing,” said his wife, who 
knew him. “It happened because of your habit 
of putting off doing your part until the last 
minute of the eleventh hour.” 

“Nix” on the eleventh-hour habit, Doctor! 

“The trouble with the people in my office,” 
said a prominent business man, “is that every 
last one of them has some pet habit or fault 
or handicap that keeps him from getting any¬ 
where. Now there’s White, always behind 
hand, late to his work, late to appointments, 
late everywhere. If he could get rid of that 
habit he could get a much better position. 

“Black is a strong man, but he has too many 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 187 


irons in the fire, and too many things outside 
his business to attend to. He might have been 
promoted a long time ago if he didn’t scatter 
his forces so much. 

“Miss Gray is the best stenographer I ever 
had, but she has such a harsh voice that she irri¬ 
tates me every time she speaks. If she just 
had a pleasing, well-modulated voice, she 
would be a perfect stenographer. 

“And that other girl, Miss Green, is bright 
and apt, but she is terribly handicapped by 
keeping late hours—too many dances and card 
parties. If she would take care of herself and 
double her amount of sleep, I could afford to 
double her salary.” And so he went on through 
the list pointing out the specific handicap in 
each case. 

But Brown and Black, and Gray and Green 
did not know these things were true. But they 
did know, all of them, that “the boss himself” 
was burdened with a worry habit, that was rap¬ 
idly tearing down his efficiency, and it was a 
common remark that if he would fuss and fret 
less, he could accomplish far more and develop 
a bigger business. 

He who would win must strip for the race. 


188 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


A story is told of the darky who was about to 
join the army and was asked what branch of the 
service he preferred, infantry or cavalry? 

He promptly replied, “Ah pufFuhs to jine 
de cavalry, Boss, den I kin ride.” 

It was so arranged, but a few hours later he 
returned and earnestly urged the recruiting 
officer to change him to the infantry. 

“Well,” said the officer, “I thought you were 
anxious to get into the cavalry, so you could 
ride—what made you change your mind?” 

“Well, Boss,” said Snowball, “Ah jes got 
to thinkin’ how it would be when we done got 
up front of de ole Kaiser and all dem Hun 
Germans, and Ah jes made up mah mind dat 
if the order come ‘to charge,’ All could git to 
’em fas enuf on foot; but if de order come to 
' retreat / Ah don’t want to be boddered wid no 
hoss.” 

What is your handicap? 

Nine cases out of ten you can find it for 
yourself, by a rigid personal inventory; but if 
you can’t, get a specialist to help you. 

A doctor may tell you it is too much fat and 
not enough exercise, or too many cigars. Or 
he may find that you are poorly nourished, that 


A PERSONAL INVENTORY 189 


the machine doesn’t get the right fuel, on ac¬ 
count of the way you eat. A dentist may tell 
you it is a blind abscess at the root of a tooth. 
A psychologist may tell you that you are think¬ 
ing in circles and suffering from morbid nega¬ 
tive suggestion. A lawyer may tell you that 
you are an “easy mark” and everybody takes 
advantage of you. A teacher of public speak¬ 
ing may tell you that you lack self-confidence 
and poise, do not express yourself well, use 
poor English and thus make a bad impression 
on people that you meet. A minister may tell 
you that your heart is not right toward God. 
An efficiency expert may tell you that your 
business methods are crooked and out of date. 
A banker may tell you that your credit is bad 
and that you are loaded with too much wild¬ 
cat oil stock. 

And they may all be right. 

But in the last analysis, “it’s up to you” to 
answer your own question, “What is holding 
me back,” and to work out the solution by 
eliminating your handicap . 


CHAPTER XIII 


SELF-STARTERS 

The most wonderful thing that has hap¬ 
pened in the industrial world during the life¬ 
time of man is the manufacture and sale of 
the automobile. The auto has revolutionized 
things in the last ten years. Twenty or twenty- 
five years ago when a “horseless carriage” was 
seen on the street it was considered a curiosity, 
but now we are in luck if we don’t get run over 
by one of the “durn things” whenever we try to 
cross the street. They are getting so thick in 
the city, it is said, that all people may be 
divided into two classes: those who get out of 
the way and those who don’t; or, in other 
words, the quick and the dead. 

It was while watching the traffic on Broad¬ 
way and noting the predominance of the auto¬ 
mobile that this “self-starter” idea came to me. 
A long line of machines stood along the curb, 
and the owners were continually coming and 


190 


SELF-STARTERS 


191 


going. But I noticed a great difference in the 
manner of their going—many of these ma¬ 
chines had to be cranked up before they would 
go. Others were ready to go instantly, without 
“cranking up.” And the thought came to me, 
“People are just like that, a whole army of peo¬ 
ple in this world have to be cranked up before 
they will go.” The other class of people, fewer 
in number, but far more efficient, are ready to 
go instantly, to start without being cranked 
up. They are the self-starters. And they are 
the salt of the earth. 

And then I noticed another thing as I 
watched these automobiles along the curb. The 
cheaper machines were always the kind that 
had to be cranked up; the higher priced ma¬ 
chines did not require it. Just so it is in the 
business world. The same thing applies to all 
workers. The cheap workman is the one who 
requires some one to come and crank him up 
before he will start to do anything. The high 
salaried man is the one who does not require 
any one else to crank him up. You can bank 
on one thing: You have to pay for every bit 
of supervising you require in this world. The 
man who does your cranking for you is not 


192 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


doing it for fun. He takes a bit out of your 
pay envelope or a slice off your salary. 

Our self-starter has that rare and valuable 
combination, originality and initiative; a com¬ 
bination which can always be cashed in the 
open market at one hundred cents on the dol¬ 
lar. So the self-starter idea is a very practical 
one. It is a matter not only of increased effi¬ 
ciency, but of increased earning power. It 
measures up big in dollars and cents. I say 
“rare combination’’ advisedly. Employers ev¬ 
erywhere say that originality and initiative are 
the rarest faculties, the hardest to find, and the 
most highly prized among their workers. 

Some time ago I asked a big man who em¬ 
ploys thousands of people every year, this 
question: “What is your biggest problem in 
hiring efficient help?” 

“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you. I have the 
most trouble in trying to get an employee to 
do the right thing in the right way without be¬ 
ing told. It’s an absolute fact that it is harder 
work to get some of them to do a thing right 
than it is to do it myself. When you have to 
tell a man what to do and then show him how to 
do it and then watch him to see that he does it 


SELF-STARTERS 


193 


right, it becomes a very expensive proposition. 
It doesn’t pay to take the time of a ten-thou- 
sand-dollar man to watch a ten-dollar clerk. 
I’m willing to pay the price to any man who 
can do good work right along without being 
watched, who has some ideas of his own and 
will act on his own initiative.” 

The head of a big department store was 
showing a friend through the store. As they 
passed from one department to another he 
commented on different members of his work¬ 
ing force. “Now there is a man,” he said, “who 
has been with this firm nearly seven years and 
in all that time he has never given me a single 
new idea—not a suggestion for the good of the 
store in all those years. I’m wishing him on to 
some of my competitors and I think he is going 
to change his place before long.” A few min¬ 
utes later he said: “Did you notice that slip of 
a girl who went down the aisle? I am paying 
that girl more than any buyer in this store be¬ 
cause she is just chuck full of original ideas. 
She has given me so many good new ideas 
about the business that she has earned her sal¬ 
ary ten times over.” 

But the greatest reward that comes to a self- 


194 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


starter can not be measured in money. That 
would be to put the effect before the cause. 
The greatest reward lies in the development of 
personal power and efficiency. In this com¬ 
mercial age the common question is: “What 
is there in it for me ?” And here is the answer: 
self-reliance first of all; the power of decision; 
the ability to grasp opportunity; capacity for 
independent thinking; and the joy of creative 
work —all these things shall be added unto the 
self-starter. 

Elbert Hubbard once said: “The World re¬ 
serves its big Prizes for Initiative” And ini¬ 
tiative is doing the right thing without being 
told. But next to doing the right thing with¬ 
out being told, is to do it when you are told 
once. There are those who never do a thing 
without being told twice. Such get no honors 
and small pay. Next, there are those who do 
the right thing only when necessity pushes 
them, and these get indifference instead of 
honors, and a pittance for pay.” 

In his old age Alexander Graham Bell was 
asked, “What is your best advice to any young 
person starting out in the world?” The old 
gentleman, looking back over the ripe experi- 


SELF-STARTERS 


195 


ence of his successful career, made answer: 
“Young man, get an idea of your own—stick 
to it—and put your whole heart and soul into 
it every day of your life.” Bell was a genius, 
with the mind of an inventor, but hard-headed, 
practical business men agree with him on this 
point. 

A man who had been drifting along for 
years as a clerk in an inferior position, went to 
his banker for advice. After explaining his 
situation he said: “I wish you would take time 
to write me a good long letter and outline a 
plan and tell me what to do to better my posi¬ 
tion in the world.” 

The old banker snorted: “Humph! I don’t 
have to think it over—I can tell you right now, 
in short order —wake up and start something ” 

There is no such thing as standing still in 
these modern times. If you are not going for¬ 
ward, you are already slipping back. The 
world moves, competition is keen, and the pace 
is swift. If you lose step with the march of 
progress you soon fall behind. That fellow 
was right who said: “You’ve got to run as fast 
as you can to stay where you are.” ^Whatever 
you do, don’t stand still; start something; keep 


196 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


going. Procrastination and indecision are twin 
devils. The man who fights them must “wake 
up” and keep wide awake. 

It is said that another man first had the idea 
of the Ford motor and car, but he slept for 
twenty years while the spider of procrastina¬ 
tion spun cobwebs in his brain, and Henry 
Ford “beat him to it” and secured the patent, 
which led to fame and fortune. 

Why is it that so many of the big executives 
in our cities, the builders and leaders, are boys 
who came from the farm? Because the boy on 
the farm is a self-starter. Out on the old farm 
he learns self-reliance—that priceless asset. 
Out there close to nature, he learns to observe 
—to meet the difficulties of primitive life and 
conquer them. He is early thrown upon his 
own resources, and he soon learns to think and 
act for himself. He goes through the “Uni¬ 
versity of Hard Knocks,” and he comes out 
with the degree of self-starter. That degree 
qualifies him for entrance in any field of action. 
He needs no boosting or cranking. All he 
asks is a fair field and no favors. And in the 
end he wins to the high places by sheer ability, 
and holds the balance of power. Such men 


SELF-STARTERS 


197 


have made the United States a power in the 
world to-day. 

Self-reliance, initiative, power of decision, 
are distinctively American traits. 

When our soldier boys got into action on the 
battle-fields of Europe, it did not take them 
long to demonstrate that they were self¬ 
starters. That indomitable spirit carried Old 
Glory over the top to Victory, and established 
the military power of America on an equal 
basis with her commercial power. 

On the other hand, let us look at the country 
lying to the south of us, a country rich, beyond 
the dreams of man, in natural resources, a land 
undeveloped and ungoverned, Mexico—the 
land of “Manana.” And just as the self¬ 
starter spirit of the American has brought 
America to the front in the march of Civiliza¬ 
tion, so the Manana spirit of the Mexican has 
kept Mexico far in the rear. 

Elbert Hubbard wrote a wonderful little 
booklet entitled A Message to Garcia —a book¬ 
let which has been translated into thirty-six 
different languages and brought its author 
fame and fortune. The day after it came from 
the press a big railroad company bought ten 


198 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


thousand copies for its employees. Other con¬ 
cerns did likewise and the “Message” was read 
by the millions. Why? Simply because it 
expressed the experience of thousands of em¬ 
ployers, everywhere, because it carried a big 
idea—an idea which I call the “self-starter 
idea.” Read it, and get a vivid picture of that 
“fellow named Rowan” who delivered the mes¬ 
sage. Do not picture him dressed in immacu¬ 
late white, reclining at ease under a palm tree, 
eating a ripe banana, and indolently listening 
to the songs of the tropical birds and the lan¬ 
guorous rhythm of the waves of the sea on a 
tropical shore. Not at all! See him land from 
an open boat and disappear into the jungle 
with that message strapped to his belt; see him, 
alone and on foot, fighting his way through 
the jungle, where heat and thirst and stinging 
insects and poisonous reptiles combined to pull 
him down; where unseen dangers lurked in his 
path day and night. See him for three weeks 
in that jungle and then see him come out on 
the other side, “having delivered his message to 
Garcia.” 

(But, as Hubbard says, the best thing about 
it all was that he took the message entrusted 


SELF-STARTERS 199 

to him and did not stop to ask', “.Where is 
he at?” 

When your big opportunity comes, there 
may be no time to ask questions. 

When your chance comes to carry a message 
to Garcia, be ready—ready to recognize it and 
start. 

The trouble with most people is that they 
do not recognize their opportunity to carry the 
message when it comes. They are looking for 
something different, an opulent chance, a 
princely opportunity, a “soft snap.” They 
would like to carry the message, oh, yes, but 
they want to ride on upholstered cushions, roll¬ 
ing smoothly along on rubber tires, over oiled 
surface boulevards. They are not ready to 
buckle on their belts and go into the open 
jungle on foot. 

Rowan had those rare twin qualities, Go- 
at-it-iveness and Stick-to-it-iveness. He had 
the resourcefulness to blaze his own trail. 

In business life, the masses follow along the 
beaten track. Only occasionally can you find 
one with the originality and resourcefulness to 
blaze a new trail. Most people travel the same 
old beaten path and wear it so deep that it 


200 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


becomes a rut. You know the old story of the 
calf path; the calf that wandered through the 
woods where Philadelphia now stands, and as 
it wandered it strayed from side to side, nib¬ 
bling a bunch of tender grass here and there, 
leaving a winding track through the forest. 
Then came another calf and followed that same 
crooked trail, and by and by came the dogs and 
the men, all following it, until they made a 
crooked road of it, and it is said some of the 
streets of that city are crooked to this day. Let 
us learn to blaze a new trail and blaze it 
straight! 

Some time ago a National City Bank pre¬ 
pared an efficiency test for all their employees. 
High on the list of questions were these: “How 
often does the employee do the right thing in 
the right way without being told?” “What is 
his measure of self-reliance?” “Does he have 
to be shown, or will he go ahead without some 
one to supervise him?” “Has he any initia¬ 
tive?” 

All these things are added unto a self¬ 
starter: self-reliance, power of decision, re¬ 
sourcefulness, ability to grasp opportunity. 


SELF-STARTERS 


201 


and—greatest of all—a capacity for indepen¬ 
dent thinking and creative work. 

Really to think for yourself, to do creative 
work, to say: “This is mine, my own idea,” or 
to improve on the idea of another, all this is to 
know the joy of creative work. And when one 
attains this, he is ready for leadership . A self¬ 
starter is a human machine with a dynamo 
called resourcefulness. It has four wheels: 
originality and initiative, go-at-it-iveness and 
stick-to-it-iveness, and it can take the hills on 
high every time. 

Edmund Vance Cook gives us these lines in 
one of his “Impertinent Poems”: 

“Are you a Trailer, or are you a Trolley? 
Are you tagged to a Leader through wisdom 
or folly? 

Are you somebody else or you? 

Do you vote by the symbol and swallow it 
“straight”? 

Do you pray by the book, do you pay by the 
rate? 

Do you tie your cravat by the calendar’s date ? 
Do you follow a cue? 

“Are you a writer or that which is worded? 
Are you a shepherd or one of the herded? 

Which are you, a what or a who ? 


202 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


It sounds well to call yourself ‘One of the 
Flock,’ 

But a sheep is a sheep after all, at the block 
You’re nothing 1 but mutton, or possibly stock. 
Would you flavor a stew? 

“Are you a being and boss of your soul? 

Or are you a mummy to carry a scroll? 

Are you somebody else or you? 
When you finally pass to the heavenly wicket, 
Where Peter the Scrutinous stands on his 
picket, 

Are you going to give him a blank for a ticket ? 
Do you think it will do ?” 


CHAPTER XIV 


COMMON-SENSE EFFICIENCY 

Efficiency is the most abused word in the 
vocabulary of modern business. But who can 
coin a new word to take its place? We have 
no synonym for it. There is no substitute for 
it. The thing it stands for is so vitally essen¬ 
tial that we can not go far without it. 

Given the right mental attitude, persistent 
and intelligent effort to develop new brain 
cells, and the initiative to start, what next? In 
what direction shall our self-starter go? How 
shall our brain builder direct and use his mental 
forces to the best advantage? 

Common-sense efficiency is the answer. In 
spite of all we have suffered from the imprac¬ 
tical super-scientific methods and the self- 
sufficiency of so-called efficiency experts, who 
operate to the tune of a thousand dollars a day; 
the world is still tremendously interested in 
genuine common-sense efficiency; the kind that 


203 


204 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


saves time and energy and money, and gets 
results. So wide-spread is this interest that the 
word “efficiency” has become the keynote of 
the twentieth century. It appeals to all who 
want to do things, and do them better. 

When we come to analyze and define this 
marvelous word, we find a great variety of 
definitions. So many and varied that it some¬ 
times leaves one in the puzzled state of the old 
philosophers who pondered over that question 
of philosophy: “Which was first, the hen or 
the egg?” But out of this chaos of opinion 
we have finally evolved a clear-cut definition 
upon which the leading efficiency experts of 
the world are agreed: “The ability to accom¬ 
plish the greatest result with the least expendi¬ 
ture of time and energy ” Looking over three 
definitions by three different authorities, Mor¬ 
ton Hardy, Ida Tarbell and Harrington 
Emerson, the consensus of opinion seems to be 
that the person who is efficient is one who can 
do the most in the best way with the least 
eff ort. 

Now, when we submit this definition to the 
acid test of analysis, we see at once that the idea 
of efficiency here presented is absolutely op- 


EFFICIENCY 


205 


posed to the hard and strenuous way of doing 
things. In other words, the modern efficiency 
teaches that the right way, the scientific way, 
is ever the most direct way, and that the effi¬ 
ciency of the individual is measured by the ease 
with which he does the thing. So you see it is 
not a case of doing things by main strength 
and awkwardness. Batting your head against 
a stone wall “does not get you anywhere,” and 
many of the difficult, awkward ways of doing 
things in the past have been thrown forever on 
the-junk heap. 

Our efficiency experts also agree that the 
average man is only fifty per cent, efficient. 
Some put it even stronger than that. Along 
comes J. S. Knox, the efficiency expert from 
Galesburg, Illinois, and tells us that the Great 
American Desert is not located where it is 
popularly supposed to be. He says that the 
geographies are all wrong in regard to that 
matter; that we have been laboring under a 
delusion in regard to the exact location of the 
desert. He states most emphatically that the 
Great American Desert is located just under 
the hat of the average man. 

Now, let us give a little more attention to 


206 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


our definition. I am one who believes it is a 
great mistake to skim lightly over the surface 
of a topic and I am not content with the idea 
of imparting merely a brilliant and superficial 
outside finish. The world is full of people who 
have heard the word efficiency a thousand times 
but could not give a clear-cut definition nor 
could they give the first law of efficiency. 
Above all else, I hope to go right down to the 
root of things. It is harder work to dig down 
and lay a foundation, a solid foundation, or to 
delve deep for the fundamental principles, 
than it is to follow the line of least resistance 
and treat the subject superficially, but I am 
sure we shall be more than repaid for the extra 
effort, not only in our ultimate understanding 
and grasp of the subject, but in the supreme 
self-satisfaction which comes from doing a 
thing well. 

The first question to ask is this: What is the 
first law of efficiency? The answer can be 
given in three words—ELIMINATE LOST 
MOTION—and this applies not only to phys¬ 
ical, but to mental motion, and further, lost 
motion has the broader significance of waste. 
It may apply, not only to loss of energy, but to 


EFFICIENCY 207 

loss or waste of money, food, or any natural 
resources. 

Eliminate lost motion. This then is our 
starting point in our quest for personal effi¬ 
ciency. What a world of meaning is to be 
found in these three simple words; and let us 
keep in mind that the last two of these words 
are equivalent to one bigger word—WASTE. 
To-day the greatest brains of the world are 
studying to overcome the problems of waste. 
A truly efficient person abhors waste in the 
same cold-blooded manner that nature abhors a 
vacuum, and all the methods worked out by 
our efficiency experts are aimed at waste. 

I have studied these methods very carefully 
the past few years, and have watched the work¬ 
ing plans used by the big efficiency experts in 
the East. These experts are frequently en¬ 
gaged by stores, factories and other plants, at 
a colossal salary, to go over the plant thor¬ 
oughly and make an exhaustive efficiency re¬ 
port. When this report comes in, it generally 
looks like an in-efficiency report. In every case 
which has come under my observation I find 
that the experts made the test on four points: 
1. Eliminating lost motion. 2. Shortening dis- 


208 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tances. 3. Sequence of motion. 4. Gravity, 
or working with natural laws. 

In order to make this clear, let me tell you 
of some general tests that have been made. 
The first test was made with bricklayers. 
After the experts had watched a gang of twen¬ 
ty-two men for three days they began to elimi¬ 
nate the lost motion. They found that the men 
were using an average of about nineteen mo¬ 
tions to each brick before it was finally in place. 
As a result of applying this first law they were 
able to reduce these nineteen motions to an 
average of two to three motions per brick. 
Next, they applied the principle of shortening 
distance. The men had been stooping and 
picking the bricks up from a platform which 
was on a level with their feet. This platform 
was raised about three feet, which materially 
shortened the distance and lessened the labor. 
Next, they invented a more convenient hod 
which held more bricks and arranged them in 
a more convenient way, so they were able to 
apply sequence of motion and also the law of 
gravity. As a final result of this test, at the 
end of thirty days eight men were able to do 
the same amount of work that twenty-two men 


EFFICIENCY 


209 


had been doing, and to do it better and with 
less effort. 

Another very interesting test was that made 
by a large publishing house in the East. They 
started a circulation campaign in which it was 
necessary to send out many thousands of let¬ 
ters. The efficiency experts were put on the 
job to see if they could get better results. They 
watched the girls who were working on the 
stamping and mailing of the envelopes. They 
found the envelopes were piled in the wrong 
way, so these were moved closer to the girls and 
piled on edge. Next, they worked out a new 
plan for stamping. A long strip of stamps 
was fed over a wet sponge directly over the 
pile of letters, so that one girl by manipulating 
the envelope with one hand, and by a single 
pressure on the stamp with the thumb of the 
other hand, was able to increase the speed from 
eighteen letters a minute to as high as one hun¬ 
dred fifty. Before the experts came in, the 
girls had been tossing the letters into a large 
basket three or four feet away. The basket 
was arranged directly under the place where 
the stamp was applied, so that all that was 
necessary was to drop the letter. This seems 


210 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


a simple thing but it proved to be very effective 
—taking advantage of the law of gravity, you 
see. The result was that on the sixth day of 
the test more letters were mailed than had been 
mailed in the first three days combined. When 
you consider that over one hundred girls were 
working on this job, you can realize the enor¬ 
mous saving. 

I recall another concrete example in the life 
of Abraham Lincoln, which especially illus¬ 
trates the value of common-sense efficiency. 
When Lincoln was a young fellow he started 
down the river one day in a boat with a com¬ 
rade. They were heavily loaded with hides and 
pelts and several barrels of molasses and vine¬ 
gar. The third day they struck a milldam and 
were grounded. The nose of the boat hung 
over the dam and they were left high and dry. 
The best local authority on the subject was of 
the opinion that the case was hopeless and that 
the boat would stick there until high water 
came but Lincoln applied some common-sense 
efficiency. He rolled those barrels to the front 
end of the boat, which hung over the dam, thus 
shifting the balance of the weight. Then he 
calmly bored a hole in the other end, keeping 


EFFICIENCY 


211 


the plug handy, and let the water they had 
taken drain out. In a few minutes the boat 
slid over the dam and Lincoln proceeded on his 
way rejoicing. 

These simple instances make very clear, I 
think, the application of the four test points of 
efficiency. 

On further analysis of efficiency we find 
there are two divisions, or two kinds of effi¬ 
ciency: Personal efficiency and Cooperative 
efficiency. Some people have one kind, some 
the other. A very few have both and many 
have neither. 

Personal efficiency is the first step; coopera¬ 
tive efficiency is the second—the more advanced 
step. I never knew any one who had coopera¬ 
tive efficiency who had not first acquired per¬ 
sonal efficiency. But this advanced step or 
second division has been generally overlooked. 
Thousands of people have given years to de¬ 
velopment of personal efficiency but have 
stopped short of the second step and thereby 
missed the logical result of all the work they 
had done; failed to reap the harvest which is 
the natural fruition of the sowing done in the 
personal work. I suppose it would be safe to 


212 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


say that practically every man or woman who 
reads this has given much time to the develop¬ 
ment of personal efficiency during the past few 
years. But I doubt if more than a few have 
made the larger application in cooperative 
efficiency. This is the need of the hour. Em¬ 
ployers tell me it is the weakest link in their 
chain. In fact, it is so rare that I have been 
inclined to change the subject of this chapter 
and call it “The Missing Link.” Thousands 
of employees are personally efficient, but they 
fail to fit in as a working unit with others; fail 
to do team work; fail to cooperate. And we 
must recognize the fact that we are living in 
an age that absolutely demands cooperation . 
There was a time when nearly every man was 
in business for himself—a free-lance—a time 
when business was made up of a multitude of 
one-man concerns, and it was not so necessary 
to work harmoniously and efficiently with 
others. 

But modern conditions have changed all 
this. To-day we have an age of organization, 
combination and capitalization. One great 
business firm to-day does the business formerly 
done by thousands of little concerns. So it 


EFFICIENCY 


213 


becomes necessary, under this new plan, for 
many heads and hands to work together; for 
many to work for a common goal, for big ag¬ 
gregate results. This makes cooperative effi¬ 
ciency an absolute necessity. 

Everywhere I go, traveling from one part 
of the country to another, one city to another, 
I find that men are organizing as never before; 
not only in a business way hut also in a fra¬ 
ternal way. 

We have Chambers of Commerce, our Real 
Estate Exchanges, our Salesmanship Clubs, 
our Civic and Commercial Associations and 
our Rotary Clubs, and always with one big 
idea back of them—a big idea that can be ex¬ 
pressed in one big word— together . 

We are getting away from the old adage, 
“Every man for himself and the devil take the 
hindmost.” The slogan of to-day is “To¬ 
gether, together ” We must realize that we 
have a common interest, that our welfare is 
bound up with that of the other fellow; that 
we rise or fall together. 

Some time ago I saw a picture in a western 
city which vividly illustrated this point. The 
scene was laid in the Rocky Mountains, near a 


214 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


mining camp. Pat and Mike were returning 
from their work, with their dinner-pails in hand 
and their picks over their shoulders. They 
were following a narrow mountain trail which 
ran along the edge of a precipice—below them 
was a sheer drop of a thousand feet, to the right 
a perpendicular wall of granite. Suddenly a 
snowslide started above them, and before they 
could get out of the way, they were caught in 
the onrushing avalanche, and hurled over the 
edge of the cliff. But as they went over, Pat 
had the good luck to catch the point of his pick 
on the rim of the rocky ledge, and Mike caught 
hold of Pat’s leg. There they swung in mid¬ 
air, below them a terrible fall to death on the 
rocks, Pat clinging desperately to the handle 
of his pick—Mike clinging desperately to 
Pat’s leg. All that held them from death was 
the few inches of steel in the slender tip of that 
pick, caught firmly over the jutting rock. 

There they swung, until finally Mike’s 
weight began to tell on Pat’s leg. He grew 
heavier and heavier and at last Pat grew 
“sore.” His temper exploded, and glaring 
vindictively at his companion, he said between 


EFFICIENCY 


215 


gasps for breath: “Moike, leggo me leg or 
Oi’ll soak ye over the head wid me pick.” 

So it is with many of us in our cooperation. 
When w r e feel the weight of the other fellow 
pulling on us we get “sore,” lose our self- 
control and “soak him” and then we all go 
down together. 

Let us learn to say “Our,” “We,” “Alto¬ 
gether.” 

Sometimes the poet catches the vision and 
crystallizes a big idea in one stanza, which ex¬ 
presses it better than a whole chapter of prose. 
So Kipling picked up his magic pen and 
wrote: 

“Oh, it’s not the guns or Armament, 

Or the funds that they can pay. 

It’s the close cooperation that makes them win 
the day. 

It’s not the individual 
Or the Army as a whole, 

It's the everlastin teamwork of every hloomin 
soul” 

That’s the keynote of success in winning 
both battles and business—the “everlastin’ 
teamwork of every bloomin’ soul.” 

Common sense dictates that a man must at- 


216 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tain personal efficiency before his cooperation 
is of any value! 

Personal efficiency is of value only as it re¬ 
lates itself to others and cooperates. In fact, 
it is possible to have a high degree of personal 
efficiency and be a failure. Every big business 
concern has on its payroll some one who has a 
high degree of personal efficiency, but who will 
not work harmoniously with others; absolutely 
“no good” in teamwork, and such an employee 
is a detriment to the firm. 

I remember a fellow in college who was a 
star athlete, the strongest man we had. In 
football he knew every point of the game. He 
was powerful as an ox, could run swiftly, catch 
the ball unerringly, buck the line like a batter¬ 
ing ram. No man could kick goal so surely 
as he, or tackle so hard. 

He was master of every part of the game, as 
far as personal prowess was concerned, but 
when he made the team and went into the big 
games, he was a detriment to the team, and lost 
more than he won. Simply because he would 
not do teamwork! Always trying to pull off 
some spectacular lone play, until at last he was 
dropped from the team. 


EFFICIENCY 


217 


In the game of “Life,” as in football, a man 
must play his part in relation to other parts, 
play up to the positions on each side of him. 
Personal efficiency alone can carry a man only 
so far, then he is done, unless he can take the 
advanced step and adjust himself to work with 
others. He must keep in mind the common 
goal and the final score. That counts far more 
than any end run he may make, personally* 
Sometimes he must sacrifice his own run for the 
sake of the score, and let some one else make 
the touch-down. 

The two great essentials in cooperative effi¬ 
ciency are adaptability and adjustability. 
Many a time a man has been saved in a tight 
pinch by adapting himself quickly to the cir¬ 
cumstances, not only in the serious affairs of 
life, but also in unexpected situations, which 
furnish the comedy of life. The story of 
Henry Watterson’s pass is a case in point. A 
young man in Chicago was very anxious to 
attend the races in Kentucky, but unfortu¬ 
nately lacked the necessary cash for a railroad 
ticket. He confided his troubles to a friend 
who had once been a reporter on Colonel 
.Watterson’s paper in Louisville. This friend 


218 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


promptly offered him the use of his reporter’s 
pass and it was gladly accepted. But after 
the young man had boarded the train and in¬ 
spected the pass he grew uneasy. The descrip¬ 
tion did not tally very well with his own gen¬ 
eral plans and specifications. His anxiety 
increased as the conductor approached, but he 
assumed an indifferent air and handed over 
the pass. 

The conductor looked at it, then looked at 
the young man, and the more he looked the 
more he doubted. He asked a few leading 
questions and the answers strengthened his 
doubts. At last he said: “I know how to settle 
it—just occurs to me that Colonel Watterson 
himself is back in the Pullman. I just took up 
his pass a while ago. Come with me and if 
you are a reporter on his paper as you say, he 
can identify you.” 

The young man began to wish the train 
would run off the track, but he had to go 
along. The conductor led him up to a dis¬ 
tinguished-looking gentleman with white hair 
and said: 4 ‘Colonel Watterson, this young fel¬ 
low is traveling on a pass as a reporter on the 
Louisville Courier> so I brought him in for you 


EFFICIENCY 


219 


to identify.” The young man waited for the 
lightning to strike, but to his amazement the 
colonel shook him cordially by the hand and 
said: 

“How are you, Jim! Yes, this is one of the 
best reporters I have on my staff.” The con¬ 
ductor apologetically withdrew, while the 
young man wondered. After a few minutes’ 
conversation with the colonel he attempted to 
thank him. 

“Colonel Watterson,” he said, “I can’t be¬ 
gin to thank you for helping me out of such a 
hole, and I a total stranger to you. Of 
course you knew all the time that you had never 
laid eyes on me before and that I was only 
bluffing.” 

“Don’t mention it, my boy, don’t mention 
it,” was the genial response, “I was glad you 
had the presence of mind to keep still—nothing 
like adapting yourself to the situation, my boy 
—adjusting yourself to the emergency of the 
hour. I was glad to help you out, in fact it 
rather helped me out—you see I’m traveling 
on a pass, too—but as it happens, Fm not 
Colonel Watterson ” 

When it comes to a practical application of 


220 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the four testing points of efficiency as outlined, 
each one must work it out for himself. In your 
daily work, no matter what it may be, you can 
use these principles in a common-sense, prac¬ 
tical way to great advantage. You may be the 
manager of a big store and find that you can 
eliminate a lot of lost motion, and use the 
energy you have been wasting. You may be 
a clerk in that same store and find that you 
can greatly increase your efficiency behind the 
counter by rearranging your goods so as to 
shorten distance. You may be a professional 
man, scattering your forces and falling far 
short of your goal, because you do not use the 
principle of sequence of motion. You may be 
a manufacturer who might double the earning 
capacity of his plant by simply taking advan¬ 
tage of natural laws, and pulling with the cur¬ 
rent instead of against it. No matter where 
or what your work may be, you can improve it 
by making a careful survey of your own effi¬ 
ciency and applying these four working prin¬ 
ciples. Back of it all, and all the time, “there 
must be a genuine desire to cooperate with the 
other fellow.” 

Let us take a common example, familiar to 


EFFICIENCY 


221 


all—the modern department store. Here 
teamwork in selling is the paramount issue. 
Passing the customer from one department to 
another is the method and it brings marvelous 
results wherever it is tried out. Salespeople 
should always remember this fact: the average 
customer has more than one want or need each 
time he comes to your store. True, he may 
come for a single article, the expedient thing 
which can not be put off till later, but at the 
same time he needs half a dozen things kept 
in that same store. He knows this and knows 
that he must purchase them soon, but he puts 
off the evil day as long as possible. Now the 
salespeople of that store will do that customer 
a positive favor by doing the teamwork neces¬ 
sary to sell all the articles he needs on one trip, 
instead of leaving him to make three or four 
trips later, or possibly to supply his needs at 
some other store. And think of the time that 
is saved for all concerned, and the lost motion 
that is eliminated on both sides! Cooperation 
in selling will make five sales grow where one 
grew before. Lack of it will lose the firm more 
sales than all their advertising can gain. 

Some time ago a prosperous business man 


222 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


by the name of Jones, went into a store to buy 
a collar. He knew of several other articles 
kept in that store which he must buy soon, but 
he needed the collar immediately, so that was 
all he asked for. [But after he had selected his 
collar the salesman skilfully called his attention 
to a certain necktie and suggested that it would 
match the suit he was wearing. Now Jones 
didn’t need the necktie, but he “fell for it” and 
departed. Now, here is the point of the story. 
On this same day that store was having a sale 
on overcoats, and Jones needed an overcoat. 
He knew he needed it and was planning to get 
it within a few days. Had that salesman used 
half the skill in suggesting to him the overcoat 
sale in another department, only a few steps 
away, that he had used in suggesting the neck¬ 
tie he could have sold him a fifty-dollar over¬ 
coat which he needed, more easily than he sold 
him the fifty-cent necktie, which he did not 
need. As it happened, Jones bought his over¬ 
coat the same week, but at another store, where 
he chanced to see a coat in the window that took 
his fancy. The first store lost the sale not be¬ 
cause Jones did not have faith in their goods, 
but because they lacked cooperative efficiency 


EFFICIENCY 


223 


between their departments. Had his attention 
been called to the overcoat at the right time, 
he would undoubtedly have bought then and 
there. Just in this way sales are lost every day 
in every store in the land. And when the firm 
loses, every one connected with the firm loses. 
It cuts down the score for the year. 

Little by little higher ideals of service are 
coming into business life. Service is the most 
common-sense thing in the world. It is at once 
the inspiration and the crown of the highest 
efficiency. But without cooperation it is im¬ 
possible. Last year a national convention in 
Chicago adopted a wonderful slogan—“The 
strength of each for the good of all.” It is 
worthy to be inscribed in letters of ivory and 
gold over the door of every business house and 
factory in the land. 

In all our striving for efficiency, the ultimate 
goal should be better service to mankind. 

Berton Braley had the right idea when he 
wrote “Business is Business.” 

“Business is Business,” the little man said, 
“A battle where everything goes, 

Where the only gospel is ‘get ahead/ 

And never spare friends or foes. 


224 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Slay or be slain, is the slogan cold. 

You must struggle and slash and tear. 
For Business is Business—a fight for gold 
Where all that you do is fair.” 

“Business is Business,” the big man said, 

“A battle, to make of earth, 

A place to yield us more wine and bread, 
More pleasure and joy and mirth. 

There are still some bandits and buccaneers, 
Some jungle bred beasts of trade, 

But their number dwindles with passing 
years, 

And dead is the Code they made.” 

“Business is Business,” the big man said, 
“But it’s something that’s more, far more, 
For it makes sweet gardens of deserts dead 
And cities it built now roar. 

Where once the deer and the wild wolf ran 
From the Pioneers’ swift advance. 
Business is magic that toils for man, 
Business is true Romance. 

“And those who make it a ruthless fight 
Have only themselves to blame 
If they feel no whit of the keen delight 
In playing the Bigger Game. 

The game that calls on the Heart and Head 
And the best of man’s strength and nerve. 
Business is Business,” the big man said, 
“And that business is To Serve ” 


CHAPTER XV, 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 

The pleasure of 'an auto trip across country 
depends largely upon the smoothness with 
which the machine runs, the freedom from jolts 
and jars and bumps. 

All kinds of roads will he found on the jour¬ 
ney—roads dry and roads wet—roads both 
straight and crooked—rough and smooth— 
uphill and down—and makeshifts for roads, 
which are in reality only an endless chain of 
ruts, bumps and chuckholes, which shake up 
the passengers until they feel seasick. But 
over all these roads the machine must make its 
way, and if it is a high-class auto, it will go 
smoothly over all obstacles without disturbing 
the comfort of those who ride. 

For their comfort it is equipped with a mod¬ 
ern device called a shock absorber, which takes 
care of the jolts and jars; absorbs the shocks 
which would otherwise land with full force 
upon the weary frame of the helpless passen- 


225 


226 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ger. Not only this, but air-filled pneumatic 
tires are used, which act as shock absorbers to 
protect the motor and the more delicate mech¬ 
anism of the machine from the jolts of the hard 
bumps. 

As we journey along the highway of life our 
pleasure and comfort and well-being are like¬ 
wise determined by the smoothness of our 
travel. Likewise we find all kinds of roads, 
and many a hard place in the road, many a 
bump that jars us to the very center of our 
being. 

We, too, need shock absorbers—something 
to equip the human machine in such a way that 
the life within may be protected from the dan¬ 
ger of all shocks, either trifling or terrible. 
What shall we use for shock absorbers, you and 
I and the other fellow? Many people would 
answer “Religion,” for they turn to divine 
help in all the trials and troubles of life. But 
religion is something so big it can not be ade¬ 
quately treated in the limited space of this 
chapter. 

Others would answer “Friends,” for they 
find solace in human friendship when “every¬ 
thing goes dead wrong.” But it is my pur- 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


227 


pose in this article to deal only with those re¬ 
sources which a man has within himself, those 
aids which he can use for himself. 

There are five shock absorbers which are 
available in time of need for each and every 
one of us. Fortified with these five, we can 
travel more smoothly over the rugged ways, 
and get more joy out of the journey. The 
first of these is 'philosophy. This does not 
necessarily mean an abstract, abstruse subject, 
of interest only to the scholar. It means some¬ 
thing which teaches a man “how to live.” Ev¬ 
ery man should work out his own philosophy of 
life, in order that he may “take things philo¬ 
sophically” when he strikes the rough places. 
It draws clearly the dividing line between the 
externals and the fundamentals of existence 
and enables one to lay hold of the eternal veri¬ 
ties of life. In the history of mankind philoso¬ 
phy has been the initiative to positive science. 
The philosopher watches the procession of life 
pass by and sees with understanding eyes. Be¬ 
hind the act he sees the cause. Secure in this 
knowledge he is unshaken in the storms of 
life. He knows that such ills are common to 
all, and when trouble overtakes him, he says. 


228 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


like the Oriental philosopher, “This, too, will 
pass.” 

Another shock absorber is a sense of humor . 
In the stress of circumstances it is the saving 
grace that keeps men sane. It is the little 
leaven in the loaf. It is a gift which should 
be cultivated. Many a time it saves the situa¬ 
tion, or wins out at a critical moment. A 
never-failing humor helps to ease us over the 
rough places, and proves a veritable life-saver 
in the hour of crisis. This gift is not limited 
to race, or sex, or to young or old. It is always 
generous, spontaneous, free-hearted. It is not 
to be confused with mere cleverness, or an at¬ 
tempt to be smart. It is not akin to ridicule. 

Three young men, students in a theological 
seminary, were out strolling one day, when 
they saw approaching them, down the road, 
an old man with a long white beard. His old- 
fashioned appearance excited their levity and 
they indulged in hilarious laughter and made 
sport of him among themselves. When they 
met the old man, one bowed in mock humility 
and said, “Good evening, Father Abraham 1” 
The second bowed and said, “Good morning, 
Father Jacob!” and the third with a low bow 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


229 


said, “Good day, Father Isaac!” The old man 
looked at them keenly for a moment, then an¬ 
swered gravely, “You are mistaken, I am 
neither Abraham, Isaac or Jacob; but Saul, the 
son of Kish, who went forth in search of his 
father’s three asses; and lo! he hath found 
them.” 

Many of us are inclined to take things too 
seriously, and especially to take ourselves too 
seriously. It’s worth a lot to be able to see the 
funny side of things. Blessed is he who has 
that saving grace—that rare gift—a sense of 
humor . 

Another way in which many of the shocks 
can be absorbed is by means of what I would 
call “a safety margin” In financial affairs, 
the man with some reserve can tide over the 
panic. Without it, he is “caught in a pinch,” 
has no margin of safety, no reserve to draw 
upon, and either becomes bankrupt or suffers 
a serious financial blow from which he never 
recovers. The same thing applies in the mat¬ 
ter of health and physical vigor. When sick¬ 
ness comes, or accident, or any manner of 
trouble, that man is best able to stand the 
shock, throw off the destructive agencies and 


230 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


recover, who has reserve strength and vitality 
to draw upon. Any plan of living which does 
not allow a fair margin of safety is faulty. 
Sooner or later that margin will be needed, and 
badly needed. 

Perhaps the most remarkable shock absorber 
of all is what Orison Swett Marden calls “ men¬ 
tal chemistry” In his book entitled, Peace, 
Power and Plenty, he explains mental chem¬ 
istry as follows: 

“The experiments made by Professor Elmer 
C. Gates have shown that irascible, malevolent, 
and depressing emotions generate in the sys¬ 
tem injurious compounds, some of which are 
extremely poisonous; and that agreeable, 
happy emotions generate chemical compounds 
of nutritious value, which stimulate the cells 
to manufacture energy. 

“ ‘For each bad emotion/ says Professor 
Gates, ‘there is a corresponding chemical 
change in the tissues of the body. Every good 
emotion makes a life-promoting change. Ev¬ 
ery thought which enters the mind is regis¬ 
tered in the brain by a change in the struc¬ 
ture of its cells. The change is a physical 
change more or less permanent. 

“ ‘Any one may go into the business of build¬ 
ing his own mind for an hour each day, calling 
up pleasant memories and ideas. Let him 
summon feelings of benevolence and unselfish- 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


231 


ness, making this a regular exercise like swing¬ 
ing dumb-bells. Let him gradually increase 
the time devoted to these psychical gymnastics 
until it reaches sixty or ninety minutes per 
diem. At the end of a month he will find the 
change in himself surprising. The alteration 
will be apparent in his actions and thoughts. 
It will have registered in the cell structure of 
his brain/ 

“There are many ways of ruining the body 
besides smoking or getting drunk, or indulg¬ 
ing in other sensual vices. Anger changes the 
chemical properties of the saliva to a poison 
dangerous to life. It is well known that sud¬ 
den and violent emotions have not only weak¬ 
ened the heart in a few hours, but have also 
caused death and insanity. 

“That man is truly great who can rule his 
mental kingdom, who at will can master his 
moods; who knows enough of mental chem¬ 
istry to neutralize a fit of the ‘blues,’ to anti¬ 
dote any evil, poisonous thought with the op¬ 
posite thought, just as a chemist neutralizes 
an acid that is eating into his flesh by apply¬ 
ing an alkaline antidote. A man ignorant of 
chemistry might apply another acid which 
would eat still further into his flesh; but the 
chemist knows the antidote of the particular 
acid that is doing the mischief, and can kill its 
corrosive, eating quality in an instant.” 


So the mental chemist knows how to coun¬ 
teract the corrosive, wearing, tearing power 


232 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


of the despondent, depressing thought by its 
cheerful antidote. He knows that the opti¬ 
mistic thought is sure death to the pessimistic 
thought; that harmony will quickly neutral¬ 
ize any form of discord; that the health 
thought will antidote the ailing, sick thought; 
that the love thought will kill the hatred 
thought, the jealous, revengeful thought. He 
does not need to suffer mental anguish, because 
he always has his mental remedy with him. 
The moment he applies its antidote, the fatal 
corrosive power of the malignant thought is 
neutralized. 

If children were taught mental chemistry, 
as they are taught physical chemistry, there 
would be no ailing pessimists, no victims of the 
“blues.” We should not see so many long de¬ 
jected, gloomy faces everywhere. We should 
not see so many criminals, so many sorrowful, 
tragic failures in every rank of society, in every 
walk of life. 

Many of us keep our minds more or less poi¬ 
soned much of the time because of our igno¬ 
rance of mental chemistry. We suffer from 
mental self-poison and do not know it. Neither 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


233 


do we know how to antidote the poison passions 
which are working havoc in our bodies. 

Nothing else will so exhaust the vitality and 
whittle away life as violent fits of hatred, bit¬ 
ter jealousy, or determination for revenge. 
We see the victims of these passions worn out, 
haggard, old, even before they have reached 
middle life. There are cases on record where 
fierce jealousy and hatred raging through the 
system aged the victims by years in a few days 
or weeks. 

Yet these mental poisons are just as easily 
antidoted, conquered, as physical poisons which 
have well-known antidotes. If we are sick with 
a fever we go to a physician for a remedy; 
but when jealousy or hatred is raging within 
us we suffer tortures until the fever gradually 
wears itself out, not knowing that by an appli¬ 
cation of love which would quickly antidote it, 
we could easily have avoided not only the suf¬ 
fering but also the wear and tear of the entire 
system, especially of the delicate brain 
structure. 

“As there is no filth, no impurity, in any 
water which can not be removed by the science 


234 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


of chemistry, so there is no human mind so 
filthy, so poisoned with vicious thinking and 
vicious habits, so saturated with vice, that it 
can not be cleared up by right thinking; by the 
counter-suggestion of the thing that has pol¬ 
luted it. 

“It is the poison-specialist’s, the toxicolo¬ 
gist’s duty to know what will antidote every 
kind of poison. He would not try to save a 
patient from arsenic poison with the antidote 
for morphine. He must have the arsenic anti¬ 
dote, and he can usually tell by the symptoms 
in each case what poison has been taken.” 


Many a precious life has been lost which 
could have been saved if people around the vic¬ 
tim at the time had only known the antidote 
of the poison taken. I have known a man poi¬ 
soned with carbolic acid to be given the anti¬ 
dote for prussic acid, which, of course, did not 
save the patient, because it was not the right 
antidote. 

The time will come when every intelligent 
person will be expert enough in mental chem¬ 
istry to be able to apply the proper antidotes 
for special forms of mental poisoning. 

We shall find that it is just as easy to coun¬ 
teract an unfriendly, disagreeable, vicious 
thought by turning on the counter-thought, as 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


235 


it is to rob the hot water of its burning power 
by turning on the cold-water faucet. We shall 
he able to regulate the temperature of our 
thought as the temperature of water. If the 
water is too hot we simply turn on the cold 
faucet. If we feel our brain heating up with 
hot temper, w T e shall simply turn on the love 
thought, the peace thought, and the anger heat 
will be instantly cooled. 

In other words, it is perfectly possible, and 
not very difficult, absolutely to control the 
quality of the thought, to regulate our peace 
of mind, to maintain poise and balance, a sweet, 
peaceful mental serenity, under the most try¬ 
ing circumstances. 

It will be absolutely impossible, by any kind 
of aggravation or work or passion or torture, 
to disturb the balance, the dignified serenity of 
the coming man. It will he impossible to make 
him suffer, because he knows the secret of 
counteracting the vicious, harmful thought so 
that it will he neutralized or will fall flat. If 
the coming man feels the “blues” coming on, 
he will be able to counteract this condition in an 
instant. He will know how to stop the eating 
of the acid thought with the alkali thought, 


236 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


If he feels a sense of weakness coming on he 
will immediately annihilate it by a flood 
thought of strength and robustness—vigor. 

Think, for example, how many human ills 
can be antidoted by the magical chemistry of 
the love thought! It is a solvent for selfishness 
and greed, a destroyer of hatred, envy and 
jealousy, of revenge. 

Think what it would mean if we could only 
keep the mind filled with loving, helpful, hope¬ 
ful, encouraging, cheerful, fearless sugges¬ 
tions! We would not then need to deny their 
opposites, for, when the positive is present, the 
negative flees. 

We can not drive the darkness out of a room. 
We let in the light and the darkness flees. 

The way to get rid of discord is to flood the 
mind with harmony; then discord vanishes, as 
darkness flees before the light. 

The way to get despondency and discour¬ 
agement out of the mind is to fill it with en¬ 
couraging, hopeful, cheerful pictures. Dis¬ 
couragement and despondency are killed by 
their opposites. They are the natural antidotes. 

An acid is instantly killed by the presence of 
an alkali, Fire can not exist in the presence 


SHOCK ABSORBERS 


237 


of its opposite, carbonic-acid gas or water. We 
can not drive hatred, jealousy, revenge out of 
the mind by will power, by trying to force them 
out. Love is the alkali which will immediately 
neutralize, antidote them. 

The trouble with most people is that they 
try to drive out the bad in themselves instead 
of antidoting it with the good. They try to 
force hatred out of their minds without the as¬ 
sistance of its antidote. 

Change the mental attitude—think love, feel 
love for that object which we hated, and the 
hatred is instantly neutralized. Whenever 
you are timid, inclined to express doubt, fear 
or anxiety in any form, expel these destruc¬ 
tive suggestions with their counter-sugges¬ 
tions. 

The last and greatest of our five shock 
absorbers is self-control . Without this all the 
others are useless. It is the balance wheel of 
the human mind. That rare faculty which 
holds us steady when reverses come, when sud¬ 
den losses come, when unexpected bad news 
comes, when bitter disappointment or failure or 
defeat comes home to us. 

That inner brake on the brain which keeps 


238 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


a man from “flying to pieces” or “blowing up,” 
that attitude which best reveals the God-like 
spirit of man; that is the faculty which gives 
man dominion over all things. And the high- 
strung, excitable American, with his tendency 
to “blow up” can well learn a lesson from the 
calm poise of the Japanese. In a recent Japa¬ 
nese play, the leading character exclaims, at 
the climax of the drama, “I have committed the 
unpardonable sin! I have lost my self-control.” 

So as we continue our journey, let us use our 
shock absorbers, that we may travel more 
smoothly. 

Philosophy, a sense of humor, a safety mar¬ 
gin, mental chemistry and last, but not least, 
self-control. 

“He that ruleth his own spirit, is greater 
than he that taketh a city.” 

The man of the future, the leader of to¬ 
morrow, will be able to do both. 


CHAPTER XVI 


PRACTICAL MEMORY TRAINING 

In determining how much a man really 
knows, his memory is the supreme test. It is 
the utility test, because no knowledge is useful, 
no learning has any practical applied value, 
unless it can he remembered. It represents 
available knowledge. It is cash on hand. 

Memory training means mental efficiency. 
Some one has said that the difference between 
a trained memory and an untrained memory 
is just the difference between a mind equipped 
with a filing cabinet and a mind equipped with 
a waste-paper basket. Both may contain the 
same amount of information, hut you can find 
it in the filing cabinet when you need it! You 
are no stronger mentally than your memory. 

An old saying comes to mind: 

“It is not what you eat, but what you digest, 
that makes you strong; 

It is not what you earn, hut what you save, 
that makes you rich; 

It is not what you learn, hut what you 
remember, that makes you wise.” 


239 


240 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


The things a man has forgotten are of no 
present value to him. His net quick assets are 
the things he remembers. 

A good joke was played on an old official 
of the English Foreign Office when he retired 
from the service. His colleagues, who had a 
sense of humor, placed a card in the shape of a 
funeral tablet upon the mantelpiece of his old 
room, hearing these words: “In memory of 
‘X,’ who departed this official life on the 30th 
of March, 1873. Scrupulous in the avoidance 
of every duty, he gracefully escaped the obli¬ 
gations of this transitory life. Regarding vir¬ 
tue as a thing beyond price, he was careful not 
to degrade it by practice. His mind was a 
storehouse of knowledge, of which he had lost 
the hey . Pax nobis.” 

The English official is not the only one who 
has lost that key—the magic key we call mem¬ 
ory—but many lose it before they retire from 
service. 

In the development of personal efficiency, 
we find that practical memory training is the 
most direct way to develop accuracy. In fact, 
a poor memory and inaccuracy generally go 
hand in hand. Important as the perceptive 


MEMORY TRAINING 


241 


faculties are, they are of little value unless ac¬ 
companied by a keen memory which records 
and retains all observations. It is not enough 
to notice, we must notice and remember. It is 
surprising how general is this weakness. Prac¬ 
tical tests made with large classes of both men 
and women have demonstrated over and over 
again that poor memories are the rule and not 
the exception. 

The value of a good memory can hardly he 
estimated. It is worth developing, and be¬ 
yond all question, it can be developed. No 
matter how weak your memory may be at pres¬ 
ent, you can greatly increase its power. No 
royal road leads to the achievement, but there 
is a way. 

Many methods and memory systems have 
been offered, good, bad and indifferent. They 
have been widely advertised, and we have 
grown familiar with such striking head-lines 
as: “Stop Forgetting.” “You Are No 

Stronger Than Your Memory.” “A Wander¬ 
ing Mind Never Arrives at a Supreme Con¬ 
clusion.” 

Thousands have taken these courses, with 
highly beneficial results; and can bear personal 


242 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


testimony to their value. While others have 
received but little benefit. Sometimes this 
has been the fault of the system; sometimes 
the fault of the student, who did not apply 
himself. 

The greatest weakness of many systems of 
memory training lies in the fact that they are 
built around some elaborate “key,” or intricate 
“cue” arrangement, which is harder to remem¬ 
ber than the thing itself. They are like the 
teacher who says to the student: “Now you can 
remember the meaning of the word ‘near’ by 
associating it with ‘propinquity’ and ‘juxta¬ 
position.’ ” After struggling with such im¬ 
practical systems, the discouraged memory 
student decides that “the cure is worse than the 
cold.” 

Some have marked out very ingenious and 
more or less practical systems for themselves. 
Every one is familiar with the old “string on 
the finger” to jog the memory. 

A business man came down to his office re¬ 
cently with a long piece of string wrapped 
around his finger. About noon his partner 
noticed it and said: “Jim, what’s that string on 
your finger for?” “Oh,” said Jim, “my wife 


MEMORY TRAINING 


243 


tied that on there this morning, so I wouldn’t 
forget to mail a letter for her.” “Well, did 
you mail it?” “No—she forgot to give it 
to me.” 

He who would develop a great memory must 
clearly understand what memory is, and the 
channels through which impressions are re¬ 
ceived. There are many of these though we 
shall only mention the three main channels 
which receive the impressions to be recorded. 
These three are, the Visual, the Aural, the 
Motor. 

The visual memory records that which comes 
to us through the eye. It is the most common 
form, and generally the best developed part 
of the average memory, because most used. 

The aural memory records that which comes 
to us through the ear. It is not, as a rule, 
nearly so well developed as the visual. Most 
people remember what they see far better than 
what they hear. Exceptions to the rule are 
found in the man who can come home after a 
sermon or a lecture, and give an accurate out¬ 
line of it, and repeat much of it, word for word; 
or the woman who can hum the air of a new 
opera after hearing it once. They have de- 


244 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


veloped the aural memory to a high degree of 
efficiency by use. Others who hear the same 
sermon or listen to the same opera may be un¬ 
able to repeat even the text, or reproduce any 
part of the melody. Their aural sense is weak 
and undeveloped, and generally they have no 
standard of tone values. But these same peo¬ 
ple may be able to give you reel after reel of a 
“movie” they have seen! They remember what 
they see , but they fail utterly to retain what 
they hear. 

Of course, a well balanced mind has both the 
visual and aural memory well developed. A 
strong visual sense is found with a keen per¬ 
ceptive faculty—its owner has formed the habit 
of noticing accurately. He never forgets a 
face, but he may be at a loss to recall the name, 
simply because he has never seen the name. He 
has only heard it, and his aural memory was 
not able to retain it. Such a man is quick to 
remember dates, statistics—all forms of fig¬ 
ures and numbers. 

I once knew a shipping clerk who was an 
expert along this line. He could instantly give 
the stock number of almost any piece of mer¬ 
chandise in the large department store where 


MEMORY TRAINING 


245 


he worked. “Yes,” he said, “give me a good 
look at it, and after that, if anybody wants to 
know that number, I just shut my eyes and she 
floats up.” Needless to say, this particular 
ability saved a lot of time and made him a valu¬ 
able man to the firm. 

But the ability to remember what is heard is 
rarer. In the memory tests which I have used 
many times in large classes, I found on an 
average only one man out of forty whose aural 
memory was stronger than his visual. About 
one out of twenty had the two equally de¬ 
veloped. All the rest were very slow on any 
test they could not see. Some could not repeat 
a stanza or paragraph accurately after hearing 
it twenty-five times. 

How rarely do we find any one who can re¬ 
produce for us a lecture or a play which he has 
heard, or any part of it. But we all know the 
inspired idiot who comes to us grinning from 
ear to ear and says, “I heard a dandy story last 
night.” Then he indulges in a fit of silent 
merriment, while you wait. “Funniest story I 
ever heard in my life!” Another fit of pro¬ 
longed laughter, which continues until you 
patiently interrupt. “Well, what was it? 


246 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Come on and tell it.” “Oh, it sure was a 
dandy!” And then he proceeds, between 
spasms, to lead you on, until he has aroused 
your anticipations, and then, just as he comes 
to the point of the story, a blank expression 
spreads over his face, and a fishy look creeps 
into his eyes, and he comes to a dead stop. It 
is only too apparent, as you watch him, that 
there is “nobody home.” After a moment of 
mental anguish, he stammers, “I—I forget the 
rest of it, but—ha! ha!—it sure was a dandy 
story.” And off he goes into another fit of un¬ 
seemly merriment, until you can hardly re¬ 
strain a savage desire to kick him hard enough 
to jar his sleeping memory into life. “The 
saddest words of tongue or pen, are these two 
words, e I forgot / " 

The ability to tell a good story, and tell it 
well, is an art in itself. He who would excel 
in this, must first of all train his aural memory 
to grasp a new story when he hears it, to grasp 
it instantly, vividly, accurately. He must 
“catch it on the fly,” for he may never hear that 
story again. He must stamp it so indelibly on 
his brain that he can reproduce it. 

The third form is known as motor memory, 


MEMORY TRAINING 


247 


It refers to all that comes to us through the 
sense of touch. The clerk in the grocery store, 
who sells many packages and parcels by 
weight, soon becomes an adept. By the power 
of his motor sense he can “heft” a package and 
often guess its exact weight, or within a few 
ounces of it. The saleswoman who handles 
dress goods soon learns to distinguish linen, 
silk, cotton and many other fabrics simply by 
the touch—the “feel of it.” She knows what it 
is without seeing, because of the impressions 
previously recorded on the motor memory cells 
of the brain. She knows the texture of differ¬ 
ent goods and fabrics, and becomes a good 
judge of quality. 

This kind of memory is best developed in the 
blind and the deaf. Being deprived of the 
visual and aural, they concentrate on the mo¬ 
tor, and develop it to a wonderful degree. 
They acquire a rare delicacy of touch which is 
almost equal to an extra sense. Helen Keller, 
and many others not so well known, have 
demonstrated the marvelous possibilities of mo¬ 
tor memory. This high efficiency seems to be 
nature’s compensation for the loss of the other 
faculties. 


248 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Any practical system of training must not 
overlook any one of these three channels, as 
outlined, but special emphasis must be laid 
upon the visual and the aural. Begin with the 
aural. Find out how weak it is, or how strong 
—give yourself daily tests. Select a para¬ 
graph to commit, preferably one with a se¬ 
quence of ideas. The following is good for 
this purpose: 

“He who knows, and knows that he knows, 
is wise—follow him. 

He who knows, and knows not that he 
knows, is simple—lead him. 

He who knows not, and knows that he knows 
not, is ignorant—teach him. 

He who knows not, and knows not that he 
knows not, is a fool—shun him.” 

Read this carefully, then test your memory, 
and see if you can repeat it aloud, without re¬ 
ferring to the book. If not, read again, close 
the hook, and test again. If you are still un¬ 
able to recall certain parts, continue the test, 
until you can give the entire quotation accu¬ 
rately, word for word. Make your test after 
each reading, and keep count to see how many 
times you have to go over it, before you master 


MEMORY TRAINING 


249 


it. Once or twice is sufficient for a good mem¬ 
ory, but few can do this without training. 
Many require ten to twenty perusals before 
they can repeat it. 

Think of the waste of time! What a pity to 
go through life with a poor memory! Think 
of the hours saved by a trained memory which 
can grasp a paragraph accurately on one read¬ 
ing, instead of ten! It would be a tremendous 
amount in a lifetime. 

Ask yourself a few pointed questions: 

Can you recall instantly any piece of infor¬ 
mation you may need from day to day? 

When you want it in a hurry is it there or 
“somewhere”? 

How many times must you see a face in or¬ 
der to connect it with the right name? 

How many times do you look up the same 
old telephone number, or address, a price, or a 
stock number, an insurance rate, or a friend’s 
initials, before you get them recorded on the 
tablet of your memory, ready for immediate 
use? 

Once is enough! It ought to be there. 

Life is short. Time is worth more than 
money! 


250 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Save your time and mental energy for real 
thinking, for constructive, creative work. 
Don’t waste it on brain-racking efforts to re¬ 
member trifles, or on the time-killing, irritat¬ 
ing work of “looking things up” over and over 
again. 

In the preceding quotation, some members 
of a class made what might be termed a “very 
free” translation. One young fellow “repro¬ 
duced” the last sentence somewhat as follows: 

“He who don’t know, and don’t know that he 
don’t know, is a bonehead—ditch him.” 

He had the idea, but his negative was de¬ 
cidedly blurred. He was not yet ready for the 
advanced step, “logical memory” or memoriz¬ 
ing ideas. 

First must come the clear-cut accuracy which 
comes as a direct result of training the “rote 
memory.” Verbal memory first; logical mem¬ 
ory and sequence later. Further, we must not 
overlook the distinction between remembering 
and recollecting. To remember implies that a 
thing existed in the memory, not that it is 
actually present in the thoughts at the moment, 
but that it recurs without effort. Remem¬ 
brance is the storehouse—recollection, the act 


MEMORY TRAINING 


251 


calling out the thought from the repository. 
“He remembers everything he hears and can 
recollect any statement when called upon.” 
These words are often confused, and we say we 
can not remember a thing, when we mean we 
can not recollect it. It is possible to remem¬ 
ber, and yet not recollect. Look well to your 
“recollector,” so that you may call up instantly, 
at the very moment needed, the fact your mem¬ 
ory has stored away. 

And then we find that receptivity is one 
thing, and retentiveness is another—that it is 
fully as important to hold fast the point 
gained, as it is to grasp it in the first place. I 
doubt if any one thing is so destructive to re¬ 
tentiveness as the hasty and careless reading 
of the daily newspaper. Day after day, such 
a reader skims through its numerous columns, 
without any effort to retain what he reads, 
until his mind becomes a sieve, with meshes 
so wide it catches nothing. The modern news¬ 
paper is the father of mental dyspepsia. Con¬ 
trast the mental weakness of such dyspeptics 
with the strength of our memory experts. Re¬ 
corded in the annals of the past century are 
men and women who could speak every living 


252 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


language; other students who have performed 
marvelous feats of memory under most diffi¬ 
cult tests. It is said that we have two newspa¬ 
per men in America to-day who can read an 
entire column of a newspaper once and repeat 
it, word for word. William McKinley, Rus¬ 
sell Con well, Gladstone, are only a few exam¬ 
ples of men noted for their great faculty of 
memory. 

Of course, we can not expect every one to 
possess such an extraordinary memory as old 
Eli. This old darky had such a remarkable 
memory, it is said, that his master once made a 
wager with the Devil, that if Eli ever forgot 
anything, the Devil could have him. 

So, one day, the Devil suddenly appeared 
where the old darky was plowing corn with a 
typical dun-colored mule of the South. 

The Devil commandingly spoke one word, 
“Eli!” 

The darky dropped the lines in a hurry and 
replied, “Yes, suh.” 

“Do you like eggs?” asked the Devil. 

“Ah sho does,” replied Eli, rolling the 
whites of his eyes. 

The Devil disappeared, and Eli saw him no 


MEMORY TRAINING 


253 


more. Then just twenty years later to a day, 
the Devil suddenly appeared before Eli, while 
he was plowing in the same field. 

“Elii” 

“Yes, suli.” 

“How?” 

And without an instant’s hesitation Eli re¬ 
plied, “Fried.” 

The most subtle compliment you can possi- 
bly pay any one you have recently met is to call 
him by name when you meet again. It may be 
a weakness in human nature but the average 
individual likes to be remembered, and likes 
to hear his own name spoken. If so, it is a 
weakness almost universal. But, the fact re¬ 
mains that you can make a decidedly good im¬ 
pression on the other fellow by being able to 
call him by name. In order to do this, one 
must be able to remember names and faces. 
This ability is well worth cultivating, for it is 
a most valuable asset in business, as well as in 
the social and professional world. It is a big 
factor in personal acquaintance. It is a friend- 
winner, while the lack of it is a friend-loser. 

Remembering names and faces is one of the 
most practical parts of memory training, and 


254 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


doubtless the most valuable. The late George 
W. Boldt made the Waldorf-Astoria famous 
by applying this idea to the hotel business. He 
laid down the law that the employees who came 
in contact with the guests must be able to ad¬ 
dress them by name. To forget a name was 
the unpardonable sin in that institution. The 
guest who registered there was agreeably sur¬ 
prised to hear himself called by name as he 
came down on the elevator ten minutes later, 
and felt highly complimented when he found 
that every one connected with the hotel seemed 
to know him. As a result he stopped there al¬ 
ways when in the city, and always the good im¬ 
pression was deepened by the fact that they did 
not forget his name during his absence, but 
greeted him as readily after months had inter¬ 
vened as though they had seen him only yes¬ 
terday. 

The merchant who can call each of his cus¬ 
tomers by name has a large “regular trade” 
and plenty of “good will.” 

The professional man who knows his clients 
personally, and never forgets their names, has 
many friends and a wide practise. 


MEMORY TRAINING 


255 


All are agreed that such a memory is a won¬ 
derful asset, well worth striving for, and most 
are willing to pay the price, in time, money 
and effort. 

But how can it be acquired? That is the 
important question. What practical system or 
method can one use to attain this desired re¬ 
sult? What help is at hand for the ambitious? 
What steps lead to the goal? 

First of all, the student must realize that 
remembering names and faces will require both 
visual and aural power. A thousand times I 
have heard this remark: “Oh, it’s easy for me 
to remember faces. I never forget a face, hut I 
just can’t remember names.” 

Mighty little good it does in such a case to 
remember the face if you can’t find the name 
that goes with it. One can’t say, “How do you 
do, Mr. Face with the Red Nose?” Or, “Hello, 
Mr. Mustache I” Or, “Good afternoon, Mrs. 
Wart on the Chin!” 

The name’s the thing! The face is of no 
value to you without the name. 

Some who fail to remember names, resort 
to little tricks or subterfuges to cover up their 


256 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


weakness. But this camouflage is so thin that 
it seldom fools anybody. The most common 
form is to pretend to be uncertain how the 
elusive name should be spelled, and seek a lit¬ 
tle first-hand information on this point. 

“Let me see/’ said a forgetful doctor, to a 
wealthy patient whose name he should have 
remembered, “Do you spell your name with 
an “i” or an “e”? “Why, Doctorr said the 
lady reproachfully, “you know very well there 
is only one way to spell my name—H-i-I-1.” 

Other name forgetters have become adepts 
at clearing the throat at the proper moment, 
and substituting a cough or a bark for the 
name. “Ah! How do you do? Very glad to see 
you, Mrs.—Hm-m-wuff-wuff.” 

All this clever ingenuity could be spent to 
far better advantage on a little persistent study 
and practise of the laws of memory. Chief 
among these is the law of ASSOCIATION. 
It enables us to remember one thing by relat¬ 
ing it to another which we associated with it. 
It stimulates a sort of “bring-together” mem¬ 
ory. When you meet a man, give attention to 
his name, note his appearance, any striking 


MEMORY TRAINING 


257 


physical characteristic or peculiarity; note his 
voice and manner; especially, learn his business 
and location. Then link all these facts to¬ 
gether, and associate his name in your mind 
with one or two points in particular. 

Say to yourself, “This man’s name is Brown. 
He has big, brown eyes and wears a baggy 
brown suit.” “This is Wilson. He is a law¬ 
yer in the Temple Building.” “This is Bow¬ 
man. I will remember him by his big, boom¬ 
ing voice.” “This little fellow is Richards, 
and he has a bad squint in his left eye.” 

Associate these points firmly in your mind 
when you first get the name, and they are more 
likely to stick. Make up your mind that you 
are going to remember the name of every per¬ 
son you meet, and then follow a system. Make 
a clear, firm mental impression. Develop a 
brain picture. Deepen and intensify it by 
repetition. Make a brain cell record cabinet 
and file your picture for future reference. You 
alone know the combination lock to that 
cabinet. 

For a time, it is a good plan to carry a note¬ 
book, in which you can jot down and classify 


258 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the things you wish to memorize. Such a note¬ 
book carried in the right pocket brings more 
“good luck” than a rabbit’s foot. 

Some names, like some faces, can never be 
forgotten. For example, Doctor Toothaker, 
the dentist. We can all sympathize with the 
old lady who concluded that her deafness was 
growing decidedly worse when she was intro¬ 
duced to “Mr. Specknoodle.” 

The law of association should never be used 
to designate certain people by nicknames. 
Sooner or later you will betray yourself. A 
young lady was introduced to a young man 
who had remarkably prominent eyes. Men¬ 
tally she nicknamed him “pop-eye.” A few 
weeks later she met him on the street, and to 
her horror, heard herself saying “Hello, Pop- 
eye!” Another woman, prominent in church 
work, privately held a nickname for the new 
minister, the Reverend Poulter, associating 
him with poultry. Later, at a church social, 
she astounded the entire gathering by address¬ 
ing him as “Doctor Chicken.” 

You may be able to fix the new name in your 
mind by making other associations. You may 
say, “His name is Wilson, or Harding—same 


MEMORY TRAINING 


259 


as the president of the United States.” Or, 
you may say to yourself, “His name is Blanch¬ 
ard—same as the name of that boy I went to 
school with, years ago.” Meeting these men a 
week later, the law of association will flash to 
you the thought, “same as the president,” 
“same as my old chum,” and the required name 
will spring to your lips. 

Be prepared, first of all, to make a good 
clear impression for your mental photograph. 
Bring to it the organisation of all your facul¬ 
ties, plus attention. Full } concentrated atten¬ 
tion is absolutely necessary. Eye and ear must 
both be on the alert to get that name. Be sure 
that you do get it when introduced. Many in¬ 
troducers have a most abominable habit of 
mumbling the name so it can not be under¬ 
stood. You can’t forget it, because you never 
knew it. 

When one of these chronic mumblers “who 
talks as if he had some hot mush in his mouth,” 
says to you, “Mr. Jones, I want you to meet 
Mr. Um-Wha,” don’t mumble in reply, 
“Pleastumeetcha,” but come right back at him, 
and ask for the name. Insist on getting it, and 
get it right. Then your memory will have a 


260 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


fair chance. Don’t blame yourself for forget¬ 
ting something you never knew. 

When introduced, focus all your attention 
on the name, hear it—speak it—write it—see 
it—taste it—smell it—feel of it with a grip 
that never lets go! And, ten to one, you will 
never forget it. 

Classification helps many people to remem¬ 
ber. Some use the alphabet system, fixing in 
mind the particular letter of tjie alphabet with 
which the name begins. Or you may classify 
according to groups. For instance, the color 
group, such as Mr. OBlack, Mr. White, Mr. 
Green, etc. The animal group, such as Mr. 
Wolf, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Fox, etc. Or, better 
still, classify according to nationality. Last 
night at the banquet you met Mr. Swanson, 
the Swede; Mr. O’Connor, an Irishman; Mr. 
McDonald, a Scotchman; Mr. Silverstein, the 
Jew, etc. 

But one of the most important factors in re¬ 
membering names and faces is that of repeti¬ 
tion. After getting a clear impression it is 
necessary to deepen it. Write the names in a 
note-book kept for this special purpose, and 
frequently repeat them aloud. One reason 


MEMORY TRAINING 


261 


that we remember faces so much better than 
names is that we see the face several times, 
deepen the impression by looking at the new 
face again and again, while we hear the name 
spoken only once, in most cases. 

Granville gives us the “Golden Rule of 
Memory:” 


“Observe and reflect. 

Link thought with thought. 

Then think of the impression.” 

While in this brief article it is impossible to 
cover fully the subject of memory training, I 
have at least outlined “the way” sufficiently 
for one to follow if he has “the will.” 

There are many delusions and fancies con¬ 
cerning this subject. One of these is that a 
good memory is exceedingly difficult to attain, 
and in the average case, an impossibility. The 
fact is, any one who will persistently work on 
any sane method can accomplish remarkable 
results. 

Another fancy is that those minds which are 
most receptive are least retentive. In other 
words, that one who memorizes easily and 
quickly, forgets easily and quickly. As a mat- 


262 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ter of fact, just the opposite is true. I have 
proved this point time and time again in my 
classes, by actual test. Almost invariably, 
those students with a quick, keen memory, who 
were first to master a problem or paragraph, 
were also the ones who could reproduce the 
same thing accurately a month later; while the 
slow ones were the* weakest in a test of reten¬ 
tiveness. 

Perhaps the most popular illusion or fancy 
is that there is some royal road leading to the 
portals of a great memory—some mysterious 
secret which can be used as an enchanted key 
to unlock this treasure-house of the mind, with 
a simple turn of the wrist. 

I know of no royal road, except the road of 
hard work. 

The first step which leads to increased men¬ 
tal capacity is to master the art of definite, con¬ 
cise perception. This is accomplished by 
noticing , with concentrated interest and undi¬ 
vided attention . 

Careless, indifferent perception is the chief 
trouble. Divided interest wastes power. 

The common tendency is to notice every- 


MEMORY TRAINING 


263 


thing in general, and nothing in particular; to 
perceive several things at the same time, but 
none with sufficient accuracy to form a clear 
mental image. 

In memory, as in a career, not many things 
indifferently, but one thing supremely well, is 
the demand of the hour. 

Memory is mental photography. The mind 
is like a great camera. If we want a good pic¬ 
ture, we must hold steady in concentration, and 
our intensity is equivalent to a good light ex¬ 
posure. We must learn to focalize. Associa¬ 
tion, Classification, Repetition—all these are 
but ways and means necessary to the skilful op¬ 
eration of this marvelous mental camera. 

Other laws of this chapter, equally impor¬ 
tant, show the student how to develop his mem¬ 
ory films. 

This, then, is our working method. A 
method, sound, sane and sensible, built on the 
bedrock of psychology, and operating accord¬ 
ing to the laws of the human mind. 

“But,” you ask, “is there no easy way to 
the goal—no golden key to unlock the massive 
door which bars the way to the treasure-house 


264 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


of the mind? Is there no magic password 
which will admit us instantly into the presence 
of the muse of memory? Is there no mysteri¬ 
ous secret in memory training?” Certainly 
there is no password, and of mystery and 
magic there is none. But there is a secret, a 
secret so simple that it is really no secret at all. 
Yes, there are three secrets, so simple that I 
can tell them in less than a dozen words. 

The first secret which will enable you to de¬ 
velop a wonderful memory is this, Trust it and 
test it. In those five simple words you will find 
the key. First of all, you must have faith in 
your memory, or it will never respond. Do you 
trust your memory, or are you one of those who 
are continually saying, “Oh, I have an awfully 
poor memory”? 

Every time you make that negative sugges¬ 
tion, you weaken and discourage your mem¬ 
ory. By repetition, you bring about the very 
thing you fear. That very suggestion rises, 
like a barrier, between many a man and the 
strong and efficient memory which might be 
his. Substitute for this negative suggestion 
this positive suggestion, “My memory is all 
right, but it has never had a fair chance. It 


MEMORY TRAINING 


265 


has not been trained, but now I am going to 
give it a good chance to develop.” Have faith 
in your memory; trust it fully, and you will be 
surprised to see how it responds. 

Then take the next step, and test it. In 
memorizing a selection, do not make the com¬ 
mon mistake of reading it over and over and 
over again and never stopping to test your 
memory. In this way you do not know what 
part the mind has grasped, and what it has not. 
The whole method is aimless and inefficient. 

Take your selection and say, “Now I am go¬ 
ing to memorize this on one reading.” That 
is possible. Then, after you have read it once, 
shut the book and shut your eyes, if necessary, 
and test your memory, to see if the lines are 
there. Very likely, only part will be there, but 
the very testing will show you what part is 
missing—will call your attention to the blank 
space in your photograph; so when you go over 
it again, you will grasp the missing part. 

Then test the memory after the second read¬ 
ing. You may still find some vacant spots. 
If so, try again and test again, and keep it up 
until you have a perfect mental photograph. 
You will find that it will not be necessary by 


266 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


this method to read the article half as many 
times as by the old, haphazard way. 

The second secret is contained in two words, 
“Eliminate abuses ” These are, chiefly, mak¬ 
ing negative suggestions about your memory, 
and omnivorous reading, without giving 
thought to what you read. 

And now for the third secret in three words: 
“Enthusiastic daily exercise ." 

Let no day go by that you do not glean and 
garner some gem for the memory storehouse. 
It may be some striking paragraph from a 
great speech; it may be some bit of verse which 
touches the heart, or it may be only a line, or a 
new word for your vocabulary. Whatever it 
may be, give your memory a chance on it and 
do it with enthusiasm. 

Day by day, and month after month, as you 
utilize these three secrets you will build up a 
wonderful memory; and at the same time add 
to the riches of your mind. Truly has it been 
said, “Memory is the treasury of the mind.” 

This God-given faculty is a marvelous thing. 
“Cell after cell, fiber after fiber in the number¬ 
less minute elements of the brain have been in¬ 
dissolubly connected by channels of nervous 


MEMORY TRAINING! 


2G7 


communication, impressed and modified by 
acts and ideas, till the whole has become a su¬ 
preme register of past experiences, ready to he 
called up at a moment’s notice by the wonder¬ 
ful power of association.” 

All that you are—all that you ever have 
been is written there as vividly as the hand¬ 
writing on the wall. Of all the wonderful 
miracles none other is so inscrutably marvelous 
as the human memory. 

Like a golden thread it unites all the parts 
of our past life; otherwise, they would be scat¬ 
tered in fragments. Between what you are 
to-day and what you were yesterday, a gap of 
unconsciousness lies—the nocturnal sleep, and 
only memory can cross that gap. Memory 
alone can span the bridge between your to-day 
and your yesterday. 

Suppose to-night, after you fall asleep, this 
mystic thread of memory would snap. In the 
morning when you awaken, all would be a 
blank—all the acts of your past life gone—all 
the old associations gone—all ties that bind you 
to the present broken—everything blotted out 
—your very name forgotten! 

So let us realize what a blessing this God- 


268 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


given faculty is—let us develop it and use it. 
Apply the golden rule of memory, 4 4 Observe 
and reflect, link thought with thought,” and 
store them away in the treasure-house of the 
mind, to he held in trust for the service of hu¬ 
manity, so that memory may become the 
Recording Angel of your daily life. 


CHAPTER XVII 


WORKING IN HARMONY 

I believe it was Aristotle who said: “The 
good of all goods—the consummation of man’s 
happiness, is his work.” 

This idea of finding happiness in your ev¬ 
ery-day work does not seem to appeal to the 
present generation. They seek happiness in 
everything under the sun except work. As a 
rule, their idea of having a good time is to 
get away from work. Anything but that! 
Anything is fun, no matter how arduous, just 
so it is not connected with work. But in this 
belief they cheat themselves. When you figure 
what a large per cent, of their waking hours 
most people must spend at their daily work, 
and realize that it represents the larger part 
of their lifetime, it is plain to he seen that if 
they do not find happiness in their work they 
are not likely to find it anywhere, or at least 
their chances are exceedingly limited. There 
are people who really like to work. They get 


269 


270 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


more real enjoyment out of their wort every 
day than most pleasure-seekers do in a year. 
It’s great to have your fun as you go along, to 
enjoy your work day by day! But this is im¬ 
possible unless you are working in harmony. 
If you are out of harmony with your job, or 
your boss, or your fellow-workers, your work 
is more likely to be a grievous burden and a 
source of misery to you. 

There is no joy in it for you, and soon you 
become a drudge. No one can afford to work 
in discord or friction. That is the surest way 
to destroy your efficiency. In fact, they con¬ 
flict with the very first law of efficiency— 
“Eliminate lost motion.” Friction or inhar¬ 
mony is the very worst kind of lost motion. It 
means precious time and energy wasted in the 
present, and the after-effect is so bad that it 
discounts the future. Oil your business ma¬ 
chinery by all means. Establish harmony, not 
only in your own personal, independent work, 
but also in working with others. We all know 
what effect harmony or the lack of it has on 
our individual accomplishments. How much 
we can do in a day when we are serene men¬ 
tally and all is well in our environment! And 


WORKING IN HARMONY 271 


how little we accomplish in a day when we lose 
our temper, or worry or fret. One outburst of 
temper is enough to spoil the day’s work. A 
few minutes of discord or worry are more wear¬ 
ing and burn more nervous energy than hours 
of hard work. The same thing applies on a 
larger scale when we are working with others. 
Without harmony, cooperation is impossible. 
That is the chief reason why efficient coopera¬ 
tion is so rare, so hard to attain. It is ruined 
by countless petty bickerings and animosities. 
Oil is far better than sand for keeping busi¬ 
ness machinery running smoothly. It is a 
crime to shovel grit or gravel or rocks upon 
the bearings. The running of the business 
world is seriously damaged by whatever creates 
friction. Every employer of labor realizes this, 
and is always on the lookout for trouble-makers 
—always listening keenly for the note of dis¬ 
cord which mars the smooth hum of his mighty 
machinery. He knows that one negative dis¬ 
cordant person can disrupt the work of an en¬ 
tire department, just as readily as a tiny cop¬ 
per shaving in a wheel box can set a railway 
train on fire. And when that person is found, 
out he goes! He is just as dangerous as a 


272 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


smoker in a powder-mill. So the employer 
who handles much labor must become an expert 
in detecting both discord and harmony. His 
ear must be as keen to catch the positives and 
negatives as is the ear of the musician to catch 
the flats and sharps. Upon this ability de¬ 
pends the progress of his working organiza¬ 
tion. When he hears the smooth, steady hum 
of his big business machine, without a discord¬ 
ant note anywhere, he knows that all the parts 
are working harmoniously without friction, 
and that he can depend on big aggregate re¬ 
sults. He knows this just as surely as each 
man knows whether his own individual mech¬ 
anism is working right or not; whether ‘‘all’s 
w T ell” or “something wrong.” Big business 
to-day runs smoothly. If it is mixed up with 
worry and anxiety and discord and inhar¬ 
mony it is not big business, neither is it good 
business, and this applies to the individual 
as well as to the mass. There has been too 
much of a tendency toward “Americanitis” in 
the past. One of our New York financiers 
testified recently that he was anxious all day 
about making money and worried all night for 
fear he should lose what he had made. We are 


WORKING IN HARMONY 273 


told by our European friends that Americans 
do not know how to live. One distinguished 
critic made this statement: “In the United 
States there is everywhere comfort, but no joy. 
The ambition of getting more and fretting 
over what is lost absorbs life.” 

Probably the greatest factor in working in 
harmony is cheerfulness. “He alone is the 
happy man who has learned to extract happi¬ 
ness, not from ideal conditions, but from the 
actual ones about him. The man who has mas¬ 
tered the secret will not wait for ideal sur¬ 
roundings; he will not wait until next year, 
next decade, until he gets rich, until he can 
travel abroad, until he can afford to surround 
himself with works of the great masters; but 
he will make the most out of life to-day, where 
he is.” 

“Happy the man, and happy he alone, 

He who can call to-day his own; 

He who, secure within himself, can say: 

‘To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have 
lived to-day T ” 

“There are many out-of-door sports, and 
the very presence of nature is to many people a 
great joy. How true it is that, if we are cheer- 


274 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ful and contented, all nature smiles with us— 
the air seems more balmy, the sky more clear, 
the earth has a brighter green, the trees have a 
richer foliage, the flowers are more fragrant, 
the birds sing more sweetly, and the sun, moon 
and stars all appear more beautiful. It is a 
grand thing to live—to open the eyes in the 
morning and look out upon the world, to drink 
in the pure air and enjoy the sweet sunshine, 
to feel the pulse bound, and the being thrill 
with the consciousness of strength and power 
in every nerve; it is a good thing simply to be 
alive, and it is a good world we live in, in spite 
of the abuse we are fond of giving it.” Cheer¬ 
fulness is indeed a mighty power and a sure 
road to harmony. 

“Nothing will supply the want of sunshine 
to peaches,” said Emerson, “and to make 
knowledge valuable you must have the cheer¬ 
fulness of wisdom.” 

“Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness,” 
said Carlyle, “altogether past calculation its 
powers of endurance. Efforts to be perma¬ 
nently useful must be uniformly joyous—a 
spirit all sunshine, graceful from very glad¬ 
ness, beautiful because bright,” 


WORKING IN HARMONY 275 


“The cheerful man carries with him per¬ 
petually, in his presence and personality, an 
influence that acts upon others as summer 
warmth on the fields and forests. It wakes up 
and calls out the best that is in them. It makes 
them stronger, braver, and happier. Such a 
man makes a little spot of this world a lighter, 
brighter, warmer place for other people to live 
in. To meet him in the morning is to get in¬ 
spiration which makes all the day’s struggles 
and tasks easier. His hearty handshake puts 
a thrill of new vigor into your veins. After 
talking with him for a few minutes, you feel 
an exhilaration of spirits, a quickening of en¬ 
ergy, a renewal of zest and interest in living, 
and are ready for any duty or service.” 

“Great hearts there are among men,” says 
Hillis, of Plymouth pulpit; “they carry a vol¬ 
ume of manhood; their presence is sunshine; 
their coming changes our climate; they oil the 
bearings of life; their shadow always falls be¬ 
hind them; they make right living easy. 
Blessed are the happiness-makers: they repre¬ 
sent the best forces in civilization!” 

When we come to analyze harmony further 
in relation to efficiency, we find it has an im¬ 
portant bearing on the fourth law of efficiency, 
“Gravity, or working with natural law.” The 
laws of this universe work in harmony. Man 
has only to fall in line. There is a divine or¬ 
der of things. Did you ever stop to think that 


276 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


order is not only Heaven’s first law but tHe 
first law of earth as well? The planets move 
in their systems, so unerringly that science can 
forecast an eclipse to the fraction of a minute. 
The waves of light which travel to us trillions 
of miles through space record a regular pulsa¬ 
tion on our scientific instruments. Regularly 
the seasons come and go, the tides ebb and flow 
and every atom of physical life moves to a uni¬ 
versal rhythm. 

Let us keep step with the music! Yes, har¬ 
mony is the natural way, the right way for man 
to work. Without it, he fails to work with 
natural law and can never attain a high de¬ 
gree of efficiency. Nor can he find joy or hap¬ 
piness in his work. Ralph Waldo Trine wrote 
a wonderful book, which he called In Tune 
with the Infinite in which he shows clearly and 
impressively the importance of keeping “in 
tune.” 

After all is said and done, what are we striv¬ 
ing for in this world? What one thing, above 
all else, is each in his own way seeking and 
working to attain before the last curtain falls, 
and “Death, the kind old nurse, rocks us all 
to sleep”? Is it not happiness? 


WORKING IN HARMONY 277 

“Money,” you say. Rut why money? You 
can not eat it, drink it or wear it! You can 
not carry much of it with you in this world, 
and none in the next! Why “money” except 
that you think it will buy for you, in one form 
or another, happiness. Or you may answer 
“fame.” But of what value is fame, unless it 
brings happiness? Achievements in science or 
art or literature? These are sought, not for 
themselves alone, but for the happiness they 
bring, either in the joy of creative work, or in 
the thought of a deathless name or in contem¬ 
plation of the benefits to posterity. Even so 
it is with those who give their lives to religion, 
or to the great humanitarian movements. In 
unselfish service they find their truest hap¬ 
piness. 

So, in the last analysis, happiness is the ulti¬ 
mate goal we are all seeking, either conscious¬ 
ly or unconsciously. If Aristotle was right, 
how important then that we should look well 
to our work—removing every obstacle that 
may cause discord, adding every positive fac¬ 
tor that makes for peace and harmony. 

May we all come to know that priceless 
thing, “the joy of the working” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


GETTING THE MOST OUT OE A DAY 

Most of us have more time than money. 
Yet time is rarer far than money and worth 
much more. In spite of this fact we waste it, 
lose it, squander it, fritter and fool it away # 

Lost money can often be recovered, but not 
so with time. 

I would like to see printed in the “want-ad” 
columns of all the daily newspapers in the 
world this “ad”: Lost! somewhere between 
Sunrise and Sunset Two Golden Hours , each 
set with sixty Diamond minutes . No reward is 
offered , for they are gone forever If you 
are ambitious to get the most out of a day, be¬ 
gin to-day to appreciate the value of time. 
Cultivate your sense of time. Have you ever 
noticed what a difference there is in people in 
regard to their time sense? 

Some have no time sense whatever; time 
slips away from them before they are aware. 
Ask such a one what time it is and he is un- 


278 


THE MOST OUT OF A DAY 279 


able to guess within an hour of the correct 
time, and his guess is generally far behind the 
clock. On the other hand, some have de¬ 
veloped their time sense to such a high degree 
that they can tell you the exact time, or within 
a few minutes of it. Such people are gener¬ 
ally ahead with their work and they get a lot 
out of a day. 

In his great poem, entitled “If,” Kipling 
writes: 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 
sixty seconds’ worth of distance run. 

Ah! that “unforgiving minute!” What a 
world of meaning in that line! How many of 
us have lost that minute and remain unfor¬ 
given ! 

Time is sure to slip away from us unless we 
can work out some efficient system which will 
utilize “the unforgiving minute.” When we 
wonder where our time goes, and follow this 
up with careful investigation, we find the leaks, 
not in the hours and days, but in the odd mo¬ 
ments—the little bits of time, “the unforgiving 
minutes.” 

There are nine thousand, nine hundred and 


280 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 

ninety-nine excuses for not doing the things 
we ought to do, but of them all, the weakest 
and most foolish is this, “I haven’t time.” In¬ 
variably that is the excuse when one is told to 
take up some study for his self-development, 
“No time for it.” Now, as a matter of fact, 
he has all the time there is; it is simply a matter 
of his utilizing his time and choosing how to 
use it wisely. Abraham Lincoln said, out of 
the fulness of his experience with human na¬ 
ture: “When I want to get something done I 
get a busy man to do it.” He was right. 

The man who is doing much is the man who 
has developed a capacity to do more and more. 
The man who is doing little is the one who has 
not learned how to get the most out of his time, 
and he is the one who is liable to shirk new re¬ 
sponsibilities. As we take on new responsi¬ 
bilities we gain the power to do more in less 
time. We learn to do it easier and to do it 
better. That is the most wonderful thing 
about personal efficiency. 

There are many ways of wasting time, but 
there are three ways that predominate. The 
first is by doing absolutely nothing—indulg¬ 
ing in blank periods of existence. Like the 


THE MOST OUT OF A DAY 281 


old man who said, “Every day I set and think, 
and set and think, and set and think, and lots 
of times I jest set.” 

The second way of wasting time is in spend¬ 
ing it doing things which are detrimental and 
foolish, while the third and most common way 
is in doing things in the hardest and most la¬ 
borious manner, which requires a maximum of 
energy to produce a minimum of result. 

Modern efficiency teaches us that the right 
way is the direct way, and that we should con¬ 
serve both energy and time. This require¬ 
ment makes it absolutely necessary for every 
one to map out his day; to plan his work, and 
prepare an every-day working schedule which 
will utilize his minutes and his hours to the 
best possible advantage. The daily schedules 
which are submitted in the following chapters 
may not fit all individuals, but they will at 
least suggest to you how to work out a similar 
outline for yourself. Across the face of the 
great clock of time there is written but one 
word, “Now.” Work out your schedule to-day. 
Don’t delay while more precious time slips by. 
Don’t let the spider of procrastination spin 
cobwebs in your brain while the best of life 


282 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


goes by. The land of “Manana” is close at 
hand. “By the street of Bye-and-Bye one ar¬ 
rives at the House of Never.” 

Rip Van Winkle is depicted as an old man, 
but there are plenty of young Rip Van 
Winkles all about us. A few of them sleep, 
others just “set,” more are directing their 
power in the wrong way, or forming detri¬ 
mental habits of temper or dissipation. But 
by far the greater number are wasting time 
and energy by doing their work in an indirect, 
laborious, inefficient manner. To all of these, 
a daily efficiency schedule, worked out as sug¬ 
gested, is a veritable life-saver. Only in this 
way can one get the most out of existence. 
Life is so short. We should strive to make 
every day a “red letter day.” This is impos¬ 
sible unless we ourselves are fit. 

To be fit, physically and mentally, it is nec¬ 
essary to be well both in brain and body. 
No day amounts to much for a sick person. 
Brain and body must both be in healthy, nor¬ 
mal condition. Pulling together, they can 
pull a bigger load; running on a track, they 
can go farther. System is the track, and daily- 
efficiency schedules are the rails. To appre- 


THE MOST OUT OF A DAY 283 


date the full glory of any day, I repeat, one 
must be both physically and mentally in tune. 
Was it not Emerson, the sage of Concord, who 
said, “Give me health, a good book, and a June 
day, and I will make the pomp of kings look 
ridiculous”? The individual must have the 
power to rise triumphant above all the petty 
cares, the trials which would spoil his day. He 
must be master of environment, stronger than 
any circumstance. Negative conditions have 
in themselves no power to defeat him. Let him 
not blame any outside thing for spoiling his 
day. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our 
stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 

Every schedule should make allowance for 
a little time each day for yourself. Some min¬ 
utes for the cultural side of life as well as the 
practical. Some for solitude as well as for 
society. Just how to get the most out of the 
day is a subject worthy of your most serious 
thought. Some very helpful suggestions can 
be gleaned from Arnold Bennett’s excellent 
little book, How to Live on Twenty-four 
Hours a Day . Says this clever writer: 

“Let us begin at once to examine the bud¬ 
get of the day’s time. You say your day i$ 


284 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


already full to overflowing. How? You 
actually spend in earning your livelihood how 
much? Seven hours, on the average? And in 
actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours and 
be generous and I will defy you to account to 
me on the spur of the moment for the other 
eight hours. 

“Philosophers have explained space. They 
have not explained time. It is the inexplica¬ 
ble material of everything. With it, all is pos¬ 
sible ; without it, nothing. The supply of time 
is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely 
astonishing when one examines it. You wake 
up in the morning, and lo! your purse is mag¬ 
ically filled with twenty-four hours of unmanu¬ 
factured tissue of the universe of your life! It 
is yours. It is the most precious of posses¬ 
sions. A highly singular commodity, show¬ 
ered upon you in a manner as singular as the 
commodity itself. 

“For remark! No one can take it from you. 
It is unstealable. And no one receives either 
more or less than you receive. 

“Talk about an Ideal Democracy! In the 
realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, 
and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is 
never rewarded by even one extra hour a day. 
And there is no punishment. Waste your in¬ 
finitely precious commodity as much as you 
will, and the supply will never be withheld 
from you. No mysterious power will say: 
‘This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not 
deserve time ; he shall be cut off at the meter/ 


THE MOST OUT OF A DAYi 285 


It is more certain than consols, and payment of 
income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, 
you can not draw on the future. Impossible to 
get into debt! You can only waste the passing 
moment. You can not waste to-morrow; it is 
kept for you. You can not waste the next hour; 
it is kept for you. 

“I said the affair was a miracle. Is it not? 

“You have to live on this twenty-four hours 
of daily time. Out of it you have to spin 
health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and 
the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right 
use, its most effective use, is a matter of the 
highest urgency and of the most thrilling actu¬ 
ality. All depends on that, your happiness— 
the elusive prize you are all clutching for, my 
friends!—depends on that. Strange that the 
newspapers, so enterprising and up-to-date as 
they are, are not full of ‘How to live on a given 
income of time/ instead of ‘How to live on a 
given income of money!’ Money is far com¬ 
moner than time. When one reflects, he per¬ 
ceives that money is about the commonest 
thing there is. It encumbers the earth in gross 
heaps. If one can’t contrive to live on a cer¬ 
tain income of money, one earns a little more— 
or steals it, or advertises for it. One doesn’t 
necessarily muddle one’s life because one can’t 
manage a thousand pounds a year; one braces 
the muscles and makes the guineas and bal¬ 
ances the budget. But if one can not arrange 
that an income of twenty-four hours a day 
shall exactly cover all proper items of expendi- 


286 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ture, one does muddle one’s life definitely. The 
supply of time, though gloriously regular, is 
cruelly restricted. 

“Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a 
day? And when I say ‘lives’ I do not mean 
exists nor ‘muddles through.’ Which of us is 
free from that uneasy feeling that the ‘Great 
spending departments of his daily life are not 
managed as they ought to be’? Which of us 
is quite sure that his fine suit is not surmounted 
by a shameful hat, or that in attending to the 
crockery he has not forgotten the quality of 
the food? Which of us is not saying to him¬ 
self all his life, ‘I shall alter that when I have 
a little more time’? 

“We never shall have any more time. We 
have, and we always have had, all the time 
there is. It is the realization of this profound 
and neglected truth (which, by the way, I have 
not discovered) which has led me to the minute 
practical examination of daily time expendi¬ 
ture.” 

Let us not put off the day when we are to 
become “Chancellor of the Exchequer of 
Time.” Let us begin to balance our budget 
of the hours—yes, and of the minutes. In the 
gold room of the United States mint, the floor 
is carefully swept to save the fine dust which 
has sifted down and would otherwise be lost. 
This saving amounts to a small fortune in the 


THE MOST OUT OF A DAY 287 


course of a year. Equally precious are the 
line bits of time which slip through our fin¬ 
gers, to be lost forever. 

“Dost thou love life?” said Benjamin 
Franklin, “then waste not time; for time is the 
stuff from which life is made.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


TUNING UP THE MACHINE FOR THE DAY*S RUN 

Any automobile man will tell you that most 
machines do not find their way to the junk 
heap on account of real legitimate wear. The 
average auto breaks down principally because 
of neglect; neglect to keep the machine prop¬ 
erly adjusted and well oiled; neglect to look 
after a hundred little details that in the end 
mean the real life of the car. Automobile men 
will tell you that if the average good automo¬ 
bile is kept in adjustment and well cared for, 
the usual premature going to pieces would be 
absolutely avoided; in fact, it would be almost 
impossible to wear out the mechanism. 

The body is a far more delicate machine 
than the automobile. It needs better care. 
The fact is, it doesn’t get as good care as the 
average automobile. Like the machine, the 
body goes to pieces, not so much from wear and 
tear, not from overwork, but chiefly from neg¬ 
lect. Take good care of your physical may 


288 


TUNING UP 


289 


chine. If you will spend a few minutes every 
morning in tuning up for the day’s run, your 
eight hours’ work will not only be worth ten 
hours of ordinary work, but you will work 
twenty years longer. 

Don’t get up by the alarm clock. Remem¬ 
ber that if your habits of eating, and your 
habits of rest, are rightly arranged, as we have 
suggested, you will waken voluntarily at the 
hour when thrifty folks begin to stir about, 
and without that turn-over-and-take-another 
snooze feeling. On first wakening, stretch 
yourself out in bed, relax all the muscles thor¬ 
oughly, and take your ten deep breaths. As 
you inhale, push up the abdomen, then toward 
the close of the breath swell out the upper part 
of the chest, and fill the upper corners of the 
lungs. Exhale slowly and easily. Repeat ten 
times. This deep breathing stimulates the 
heart action, equalizes the circulation, and 
sends the blood charged with life-giving oxy¬ 
gen to the brain, which has lain dormant dur¬ 
ing sleep. You will find the ten breaths are 
real awakeners. 

After your ten breaths you will jump out 
of bed with a genuine desire to get the most 


290 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


out of the day. Drop your clothing, and with 
the body nude, spend at least five minutes at 
your morning exercise. In taking the exercise 
be guided by our instructions in Chapter 
IX. Also follow Doctor Newhall’s exercises 
in Chapter XXII. Five to ten minutes’ ex¬ 
ercise taken as advised, twice daily, will keep 
any one in good physical condition. 

After your exercise you are ready for your 
sponge bath. Proceed by drawing into the 
bathtub about four inches of tepid (not cold) 
water. Then stoop over the tub and with a 
sponge, or better, a coarse knit wash cloth, 
sponge the upper part of the body. While 
sponging, dip the wash cloth into the water 
frequently and rub the skin vigorously. Then 
rub this half of the body thoroughly with a 
dry towel, and, if you wish, with a flesh brush, 
until the skin is thoroughly dried and of a 
pink color. 

Sponge the lower part of the body by step¬ 
ping into the tub and rubbing the lower abdo¬ 
men and lower limbs thoroughly with the 
water as directed above. Then step out of the 
tub, dry and rub pink the lower part of the 
body as you did the upper. This is the care 


TUNING UP 


291 


the average man should give his skin. Those 
who are debilitated should omit the sponging, 
especially in cold weather, taking in its stead 
a daily rubbing of the skin with a dry towel 
or flesh brush. 

To follow out this plan of skin treatment 
successfully, and to get the most out of it, sev¬ 
eral precautions should be observed. The bath¬ 
room and the water should be sufficiently warm 
to avoid chilling. Even the vigorous man, 
with rare exceptions, should not use cold water, 
but in its stead tepid water. All the good to 
be had from the cold bath is to be obtained 
from the tepid hath as just described, and none 
of its bad effects. If, after following up the 
tepid sponge in a warm room, for a month, 
there is still a tendency to chilliness soon after¬ 
ward, the sponging should he omitted, and 
only the dry rub used. 

Those having sensitive skins should not use 
a coarse towel or stiff flesh brush. Moreover, 
while the rubbing should be thorough, it should 
not be sufficiently violent to irritate or injure 
the skin. Just on rising is the best time for 
the bath; it will invigorate you for the day, put 
added “pep” into each hour. However, if con- 


292 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


venience demands, the sponge and rub-down 
may be taken later in the day, or just before 
retiring. If the bathroom is not accessible 
this bath may be taken just as effectively from 
a large basin or bucket of water. 

On first beginning this skin treatment, con¬ 
siderable rubbing—-especially for any one hav¬ 
ing a sluggish skin—is necessary to bring 
about a good reaction. After a few weeks, 
however, a few minutes of this skin treatment 
will bring the skin up to a pink color. 

After you have spent the night in the fresh 
air, taken your ten breaths, had your exercise, 
and your sponge bath, your brain and your 
body are in prime condition for the morning 
study hour; the best period of the day, the 
time when you should do your most exacting 
work—especially if it is brain work—the time 
when you plan out your day; the time when 
you unravel the knotty problems. See our 
working schedules in Chapter XNIV. 

The most important part of your tuning up 
for the day’s run is your breakfast. Many a 
day’s fine work is spoiled by what the man does 
in his twenty minutes at the breakfast table. 
If you are going to be at the top notch during 


TUNING UP 


298 


the forenoon; if you are going to take the lag 
out of the afternoon’s work; if you are going 
to have the clear eye, the quick step, and the 
keen brain at four p. m., look well to your 
breakfast. Eat plenty, but don’t overeat, and, 
above all, eat foods that are easily digested, 
foods that don’t draw on your nerve force, 
foods that don’t overwork your stomach, foods 
that do not rob you of the vigor that you ought 
to put into your day’s work. See our daily 
bills of fare, Chapter XXI. 

This brings us up to the walk to work. Here 
the man who is obliged to walk to his work has 
the advantage over the man who goes in his 
automobile. Don’t walk too vigorously just 
after your meal, but rather take it leisurely. If 
you are a suburbanite, we hope that you live a 
sufficient distance from the car line so that you 
can get a fifteen or twenty minutes’ walk at 
this time of day. It will put still more “pep” 
into your morning’s work, and take out still 
more of the drag from the afternoon. But 
don’t rob the walk of all the good it has in 
store for you by lighting a cigar, or a cigarette, 
or a pipe. 

In addition to the five essentials to the day’s 


294 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tuning* up already mentioned, there is one more 
important thing that must not he neglected: 
it is the morning attention to the bowels. You 
should have a regular time for this important 
matter. Regular attention goes far toward 
correcting the universal ill—constipation. In 
the big power plants, early in the morning the 
ashes and clinkers are cleaned out for the day’s 
run. The best time for you to give nature a 
chance to clean out your power plant is just 
after the breakfast; do it daily without fail. 

To sum up, follow regularly these six 
steps in tuning up your machine for the day’s 
run: the ten deep breaths in bed; your five min¬ 
utes’ morning exercise; your sponge bath; 
your digestible breakfast; ten minutes at stool; 
and your ten minutes’ morning walk. This 
list may look formidable to you; it may look 
like a lot of bother, but, like the flivver, it isn’t 
so bad as it looks. Form the habit. Get into 
the routine of doing these things and you will 
be surprised to find how little additional time 
they will require. In fact, thirty minutes in¬ 
vested in the morning in these six items of 
tuning up will be returned to you several-fold 
before night. They ^will actually save you 


TUNING UP 


295 


time when you most need it, and pay you big 
dividends in increased working power. Not 
only can you make the time spent in this morn¬ 
ing tuning-up the most valuable of the entire 
day in real dollars, but the satisfaction and 
pleasure you will get in running your machine 
in perfect tune will in itself more than com¬ 
pensate for the time and effort spent. Begin 
the day right, and you will “take it on high” 
easily. 


CHAPTER XX 


TUNING UP! THE DRIVER FOR THE DAY’S RUN 

After the machine is all ready for the trip, 
who is going to run it? What kind of a driver 
do you want for your car? 

Brain is the engineer that runs the body. 
Mind is the master driver. 

It is not enough to put your machine in or¬ 
der. No matter how perfectly it may be ad¬ 
justed, how fit for the day’s run, a reckless or 
unskilled driver may damage it seriously be¬ 
fore, noonday or wreck it before sunset. 

The driver, too, must be “tuned up” just as 
carefully as the machine. No, Bill, “a little 
something wet” before you start will not do 
the trick, nor will “a nip now and then” during 
the day keep you in tune. 

In the wet old days before the big drought, 
that kind of tuning up was tried out very thor¬ 
oughly, and it sent so many good machines 
into the ditch that it is no longer considered 
reliable. No, the days when men took a little 


296 


FOR THE DAY’S RUN 


297 


liquid joy to brace them up for the day’s drive 
are forever past. The man of to-day and to¬ 
morrow must depend upon himself—draw 
upon his inner reserves for the nerve and skill 
necessary to make the run. 

The mark of a master driver is mental poise . 
Beyond all question that is the dominant qual¬ 
ity that distinguishes him. When he gets up 
in the morning he makes it his first business 
to assure himself of his poise. Never start the 
day’s journey without it: To make sure of it, 
stock up overnight. 

The best and surest way to make certain of 
poise in the morning is to begin the night be¬ 
fore. Call upon your subconscious mind— 
the mind that never forgets, the mind that 
works while you sleep, the mind of mighty re¬ 
serves, the great “within” of yourself. 

The best way to reach your subconscious¬ 
ness is by auto-suggestion. Sounds like psy¬ 
chology, you say? So it is, but not so pro¬ 
found as it sounds. All admit the far-reaching 
influence of suggestion, the wonderful force 
which is more subtle than reasoning, more po¬ 
tent than argument. Suggestion is used to 
move others to action, but auto-suggestion or 


298 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


self-suggestion is far greater, because it 
touches the mainsprings of your own individ¬ 
ual life. It is personal, individual, subjective 
in the fullest sense. 

Repeat a suggestion which has been made 
to you, and it becomes auto-suggestion. Re¬ 
peat it aloud, and you will receive a double 
self-impression. Audible affirmation is a good 
habit to form. It is a positive application of: 
“Sez I to myself, sez I.” 

James Whitcomb Riley used to tell a story 
in his inimitable way, of the old man down in 
Indiana who had a habit of talking to himself. 
One day a neighbor took him to task. 

“Uncle, why do you always go around 
talkin’ out loud to yerself?” 

“Well,” said the old fellow, “I got two good 
reasons: in the fust place, I like to talk to a 
smart man, and in the second place, by heck, 
I like to hear a smart man talk!” 

On such a basis we can all indulge in the 
audible affirmation habit. And I repeat, the 
best time to reach the subconscious, and get in 
tune for the next day’s work, is just before you 
go to sleep. Throw off all worries and trou¬ 
bles, then hang up new pictures on the walls. 


FOR THE DAY’S RUN 299 


Prepare the mind as carefully for the night as 
you do the body by means of the bath. 

It is an accepted fact that the thought or 
image you hold in mind just before you fall 
asleep goes on working long hours after you 
have lost consciousness. The kind of thought 
you hold will determine whether you waken in 
the morning refreshed or exhausted. The ac¬ 
tion of your subconscious mind while you sleep 
will determine whether you will get up “feel¬ 
ing fit,” or more tired than when you went 
to bed. 

You can not afford to hold any negative 
thought to sleep on. It is worse than an old- 
fashioned “corn-shuck” mattress. At least once 
in twenty-four hours be at peace with all the 
world. “ Why should a man lie down at night 
like a camel of the desert, with a heavy bur¬ 
den on his back?” 

Imagine yourself as the man or woman you 
hope to be, filled with happiness, prosperity, 
power, doing the thing you most earnestly de¬ 
sire to do of all the things in the world. Go to 
sleep with a smile on your face, remembering 
that the subconscious mind is most susceptible 
during sleep, and give it a joyful, constructive 


300 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


message to carry into the land of dreams. Pic¬ 
ture yourself as you would be; image success; 
claim it as your own! See it vividly! Visual¬ 
ize your ideals! Then back it all up with some 
positive, audible affirmation which will sink 
into your subconscious mind, grow into your 
life, and become a part of you while you sleep; 
to be out-pictured in your life and find expres¬ 
sion in your work to-morrow. 

To think rightly is to create. To reach the 
great “within” of yourself, through auto-sug¬ 
gestion while you sleep, is to put yourself in 
harmony for the coming day. Then, when the 
new day dawns, you will be all tuned up for 
the drive. 

In making your affirmation, be sure to make 
it in the present. Avoid the “has-been” or 
“hope-to-be” thought. Be an “Izzer.” Bring 
your positive statement down to the here and 
now, and say: “I am strong, capable, success¬ 
ful! I have opportunity in my grasp, now, 
and I am winning out. My work is big and 
constantly growing bigger.” 

Auto-suggestion is a wonderful factor in 
maintaining health. In the chapters of this 
book much valuable advice and information are 


FOR THE DAY’S RUN 


301 


given on right eating. As you use this knowl¬ 
edge, couple it with the potent power of sug¬ 
gestion. Put back of it the positive thought, 
that the food you are putting into your mouth 
will nourish and strengthen you, and the bene¬ 
fit you will derive will be twofold. 

Deep breathing is another big factor in 
keeping one in tune. When discord creeps in, 
and the road is long and full of bumps, how it 
helps to throw back the shoulders and lift up 
the lungs and take a big, full breath, clear from 
the diaphragm to the chin—a regular lung 
sweeper! And while you take it, take also the 
suggestion that you are drawing into your sys- 
ter “life more abundant.” Soon you will feel 
a vibration of power and harmony through 
your whole being. 

Physical culture directors tell us that in 
gymnasium work, the man who works on his 
muscles and continually holds the suggestion 
that the exercise is making him strong, de¬ 
velops much more rapidly than the one who 
takes the same exercise mechanically and puts 
no thought back of it. 

Voice specialists tell us that the pupil must 
think the tone, in order to make good pro- 


302 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


gress; that suggestion is necessary to develop 
a musical brain. 

As it helps in all activities, so it helps to ac¬ 
quire poise. 

No man can force himself into harmony. 
He can not lift himself by the boot-straps. He 
can not tune himself up with a sledge ham¬ 
mer. He must recognize a higher law, and use 
a more subtle means. In the preceding illus¬ 
trations the practical application of such a law 
is shown. In a similar way, suggestion will 
help or hinder you in your daily work, keep 
you happy and harmonious, or discordant and 
miserable, according to your attitude. It all 
depends upon whether the suggestion is posi¬ 
tive or negative. 

If you think your work is a drag and a bur¬ 
den and killing you, it will, very likely, wear 
you out in the end, and you will find no joy 
along the way; but if you take the positive sug¬ 
gestion, that you have only begun to use your 
resources, that you have a mighty reserve to 
draw upon, that you are learning how to use 
your power more efficiently every day, then 
you will become a master driver , enjoy life as 


FOR THE DAY’S RUN 


303 


you travel along, and go over the top on high 
with ease. 

“The human mind may be attuned to any 
key, high or low, base or noble, by the power 
of suggestion.” 

Strike the positive keynote! 

Throw away your old tallow candles and 
kerosene lamps. Turn on the electricity! This 
is the modern way! 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE DAILY BILL OE FARE 

The following menus are planned along 
hygienic lines and are in harmony with the 
dietetic principles set forth elsewhere in this 
book. While it is not expected that they will 
be slavishly followed, it should be borne in 
mind that they are scientifically constructed. 
Each day’s bill of fare as here given indicates 
(a) the kinds of foods which are at once safe, 
nutritious, easily digested and palatable; (b) 
the quantity of food necessary for the proper 
sustenance of the average person for one day; 
(c) the combinations of foods which work well 
when taken together into the human stomach. 

Careful study of these menus will enable 
you to understand the principles of food selec¬ 
tion and combination upon which they are 
built. Many minor changes for the sake of 
variety, or dictated by market conditions, can 
be made without violating these principles. 

Note —This chapter is contributed by Mrs. R. R. Daniels. 


304 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 305 


We suggest, however, that until you have 
gained an understanding of the reasons under¬ 
lying the planning of these daily menus, you 
should follow them as closely as possible. Re¬ 
member that they are daily menus; each meal is 
planned with reference to the others for the 
same day. To combine some items from break¬ 
fast with others from lunch and dinner would 
result in totally unhygienic food combinations 
and would totally destroy the dietetic balance 
for the day. 

On the pages following each menu are given 
hygienic recipes and directions for cooking the 
various foods and dishes suggested. 

Again we wish to emphasize the fact that 
food may be cooked so as to make it easily di¬ 
gested and the resulting dishes be just as pal¬ 
atable and just as appetizing, or even more so> 
than when cooked in ordinary ways, with little 
or no thought as to nutritive value in digesti¬ 
bility. The holiday dinner menus afford 
plenty of good things to eat, with the mischief 
makers of the ordinary holiday dinners elimi¬ 
nated. 


A WINTER MENU 
Number One 

Breakfast 

Breakfast Food with Cream 
Whole Wheat Bread or Corn Meal Gems 
Butter Bacon 

Cereal Coffee 

Lunch (No. 1) 

Hard Toast, Buttered 
Apples or Other Fresh Cooked Fruit 
Figs and Nuts 
Cereal Coffee or Glass Milk 

or (No. 2) 

Hard Toast, Buttered 

Cheese or Nuts Cereal Coffee 

Gelatin or Custard 

Dinner 
Clear Soup 

Beef, Steak or Roast, or Lamb Chops or Roast 
or Fish, Baked or Broiled 
Two Cooked Non-Starchy Vegetables 
Combination Salad 
Baked Apple with Cream 

Note —Lunch No. 1 is suitable for the average man who does but lit¬ 
tle muscular work. Lunch No. 2 contains more starchy food and should 
be used by those doing hard work. 




306 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Winter Menu Number One 

Breakfast Food may include any of the dry 
foods. Corn foods are good for winter use. 

Whole Wheat Bread is to be made of whole 
wheat, graham, or white flour, preferably the 
first two. To one quart of the flour should be 
added a heaping teaspoonful of first-class bak¬ 
ing powder, a pinch of salt, and a tablespoon¬ 
ful of melted butter or olive oil. These in¬ 
gredients should be thoroughly mixed with the 
dry flour, and the baking pan and the oven 
should be got in readiness for baking. Then 
sufficient sweet milk should be added to the 
flour with its ingredients to make a stiff* dough. 
After mixing quickly, put the loaf into an un¬ 
greased pan and flatten out to the thickness of 
about an inch and a half. It should then be 
put into a moderate oven and baked until thor¬ 
oughly done and well browned. This bread 
should not be eaten until cold. 

Corn Meal Gems . One cup yellow com 
meal mush, one cup white flour, four level tea¬ 
spoons baking powder, one cup milk, two tea- 


307 


308 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


spoons melted butter, one-half teaspoon salt. 
Thin the mush with the milk. Add butter and 
flour gradually. Beat well until batter is per¬ 
fectly smooth and creamy. Stir in baking 
powder and pour at once into small, hot iron 
gem pans that have merely been wiped out 
with a bit of greased paper to prevent sticking. 
Bake in moderately hot oven. When done, 
split crosswise and toast. Butter lightly, re¬ 
place halves together and serve. 

The advantage in the use of iron pans for 
any kind of gems, instead of the more com¬ 
monly used tin or enamel ware, is the forma¬ 
tion of a deep rich crust without the use of 
grease for the purpose. 

The Non-Starchy Vegetables may be se¬ 
lected from the following, using the best grade 
of canned vegetables when the fresh are not to 
be had: Tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, spin¬ 
ach, onions, beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, 
peas, string beans and asparagus. 

Combination Salad may be made from any 
or all of the following vegetables: lettuce, raw 
cabbage, water cress, celery, endive, raw to¬ 
matoes, cucumbers, radishes and raw onions. 
Spinach and cauliflower may be used. Car- 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 309 


rots may be ground in a vegetable mill, or 
diced, and added to the salad. 

A good winter salad may be made of let¬ 
tuce, celery and canned tomatoes, equal parts; 
or cabbage, carrots and celery, chopped fine or 
ground in a vegetable mill, with canned toma¬ 
toes and onions added, if desired. 

Salads should be dressed with salt, lemon 
juice and olive oil; paprika may be added if 
desired. Mayonnaise dressing may be used. 


A WINTER MENU 

Number Two 

Breakfast 

Cereal Breakfast Food, with Cream 
Hard Toast with Butter 
Bacon 

Stewed Prunes 

Cereal Coffee with Cream and Sugar 
launch (No. 1) 

Salsify or Oyster Plant Soup 
or Cream of Celery Soup 
Hygienic Croutons 
Hard Toast with Butter 
Baked Apple or Stewed Figs with 
Whipped Cream 
or (No. 2) 

Bunch of Raisins or Half-Dozen Pressed Figs 
Raw Apples Nuts 

Cereal Coffee with Cream and Sugar 
or 

Malted Milk, made with hot water and cream 

Dinner 

Beefsteak 

Brussels Sprouts or Canned Peas 
Parsnips or Carrots Combination Salad 

Canned Pineapple or other Fruit ? 
with Whipped Cream 

310 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Winter Menu Number Two 

The Breakfast Food may be either any of 
the dry prepared foods or (except oatmeal) 
any of those to be cooked—the former are pre¬ 
ferred. When the cooked breakfast foods are 
used they should be cooked from one to three 
hours, depending on whether they have been 
cooked previously in the process of manufac¬ 
ture. Sugar should not be eaten on the break¬ 
fast foods. 

The Hard Toast may be made from white, 
graham or rye bread. The bread is to be cut 
thin, dried out in a slow oven, and browned on 
both sides. 

Bacon is to be fried to suit. Do not let the 
bacon cook too fast; if the grease is scorched 
it is more difficult to digest. Bacon medium 
done is better than crisp. 

Salsify Soup . Prepare the oyster plant by 
scraping off the skin (hold under water to pre¬ 
vent its discoloration) ; cut in dices and cook in 
a little water until quite tender; then mash 
well, add a lump of butter, salt and pepper to 


311 


312 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


taste, and about two cups of milk to each cup 
of the cooked vegetable; heat just to boiling, 
and serve. 

Celery Soup may be made in the same way 
as the Salsify Soup. 

Hygienic Croutons . Tear into small pieces 
part or whole loaf of bread, white or whole 
wheat. Dry out and brown lightly in slow 
oven. Serve hot. 

Nuts should be chewed unusually well; use 
either almonds, pecans, or filberts. 

Beefsteak should be broiled, either on a 
broiler or pan-broiled in a hot skillet, without 
grease, turning frequently. It is most whole¬ 
some cooked medium-rare. 

The Vegetables may be prepared for cook¬ 
ing in the usual way, then boil in as little water 
as possible until done. Again vegetables should 
not be drained, either while cooking or after¬ 
ward, as the water in which they are cooked 
contains the valuable mineral salts. Serve 
with drawn butter or meat drippings, season 
with salt and paprika. 

Combination Salad may be prepared to suit 
the taste by mixing several of the raw vege¬ 
tables. Often left-over cold vegetables may 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 313 


also be added. A good winter salad can be 
made of either head lettuce or chopped cab¬ 
bage, fresh or canned tomatoes, and celery or 
ground carrots, with a little onion, if desired. 
Also canned peas and string beans may be in¬ 
cluded. A good dressing for the salad is made 
of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and paprika; or 
mayonnaise dressing may be used. 

Canned pineapple is a good dessert with a 
meat meal, since it contains a ferment which 
assists in digesting the meat. Any fruit at this 
meal should not contain much sugar.. 


A J SUMMER MENU 
Number Three 


Breakfast (No. 1) 

Hygienic Biscuits Butter 

Bacon or Nuts 
Raspberries and Cream 
Cereal Coffee 
or (No. 2) 

Hard Toast Butter 

Bacon or One or Two Eggs 
Cantaloupe 
Cereal Coffee 

Lunch 

Combination Salad Nuts 
Buttermilk or Cold Malted Milk 
Fresh Fruit with Cream, Plain or Whipped 
or Ice-Cream or Sherbert 

Dinner 

Cream of Asparagus Soup 
Hard Toast or Croutons 
One Starchy Vegetable (See List) 

Two Cooked Non-Starchy Vegetables 
Gelatin sprinkled with Ground Nuts served 
with Whipped Cream 


314 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Summer Menu Number Three 

Biscuits may be made by using one-fourth 
white flour, one-half whole wheat flour, and 
one-fourth bran, mixed thoroughly. To one 
quart of the flour add sufficient baking pow¬ 
der to make the biscuits light, two or more tea¬ 
spoonfuls, Price’s or Royal preferred (no 
harm can come from good baking powder) ; a 
tablespoonful of melted butter, or olive oil; 
and salt to suit. These ingredients should be 
mixed thoroughly with the flour; if chilled, the 
biscuits will be lighter. After the oven has 
been heated moderately hot and everything is 
in readiness for baking, sufficient milk should 
be added to the flour to make a wet dough. 
The dough should be rolled quickly, and as lit¬ 
tle as possible, then cut and put into the oven 
in an ungreased pan. The baking should be 
continued until the biscuits are baked well and 
are brown on both sides. To be light and of a 
good flavor, the biscuits should be made 
quickly; not more than two minutes should 
elapse between the time the milk is added to 


316 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


the flour and the biscuits are ready for baking. 
When baked, they should not be more than an 
inch thick. For variety one-half graham and 
one-half whole wheat, or all white flour may be 
used. 

Menu No. 2 should not be used oftener than 
two or three times a week. Most persons can 
not properly take care of eggs more frequently 
than this. 

The Eggs should be cooked in any way ex¬ 
cept by frying. 

The Cereal Coffee may be taken with plenty 
of cream and but little sugar. 

Cream of Asparagus Soup. One quart rich 
milk, one can asparagus, or one and one-half 
pounds fresh asparagus, two tablespoons but¬ 
ter, a bit of onion. Scald onion with the milk 
and remove it. Break canned asparagus into 
bits and heat in pan with butter, being very 
careful not to scorch. If fresh asparagus is 
used, cook until tender and prepare the same as 
the canned asparagus. Season asparagus well 
with salt and pepper, add the hot milk and 
serve. A spoonful of whipped cream used as a 
float adds greatly to the soup. 

The Starchy Vegetables include the follow- 


DAILY BILL OF FAIIE 317 


ing: artichokes, bananas, beans (navy, butter 
and lima), breads (white, graham, rye, whole 
or entire wheat), cereals, corn (meal or green 
corn), crackers (of every kind), macaroni, 
malted milk, mushrooms, noodles, peanut but¬ 
ter, peas (dried), potatoes (Irish or sweet), 
pumpkin, rice winter squash, sago, spaghetti, 
tapioca, vermicelli. 


A SUMMER MENU 
Number Four 


Breakfast 

Omelette 

Hard Toast Butter 

Pears 

Cereal Coffee 

Lunch (No. 1) 

Fruit Salad Nuts 

Buttermilk, Cocoa or Cereal Coffee 
or (No. 2) 

Hard Toast Butter 

Gelatin Salad with Mayonnaise Dressing 
Cheese Nuts 

Buttermilk or Cereal Coffee 

Dinner 

Succotash 

Hygienic Biscuits Butter 

Summer Squash or Carrots and Turnips 
Cabbage or Cauliflower 
Celery or Radishes 
Prune Whip Melon 

Cereal Coffee or Cocoa 


318 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Summer Menu Number Four 

Omelette. Use one egg for each person. 
Separate the yolks from the whites. To the 
yolks add melted butter or diced bacon, cooked 
a few minutes, and a tablespoonful of cream 
for each egg, with salt, pepper and a dash of 
paprika. Beat thoroughly, then add the well- 
beaten whites. Stir all together, pour into a 
buttered drip pan and bake in a hot oven until 
the omelette is puffed up and is baked a light 
brown. Serve immediately. 

Pears should be fully ripe; in this condition 
they contain practically no acid and may be 
eaten with the starchy food. The pears may 
be eaten raw, or baked, or stewed. 

Fruit Salad may be made from any fruits 
and from almost all fruits except bananas. 
Bananas are not really a fruit. In the summer 
time the body of the salad may be made of 
grapes, with other fruits added to suit the 
taste. Celery, diced rather fine, may also be 
included. Dress with whipped cream to which 
has been added sufficient mayonnaise dressing 
to suit the taste. Serve on lettuce. 


319 


320 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Gelatine Salad is made as usual of gelatin 
and chopped salad vegetables with salad sea¬ 
soning, prepared in individual molds. 

Buttermilk should be the Bulgarian variety, 
not the churn buttermilk. 

Hygienic Biscuits . (For recipe see direc¬ 

tions for previous menu.) 

Carrots and Turnips should be washed, 
peeled, diced and cooked together—the com¬ 
bined flavors are better than that of either one. 
Like all vegetables they should be cooked in as 
little water as possible and cooked down well; 
no water should be drained off. In draining 
the water from vegetables much of the food 
value is lost. After cooking, season with 
cream, butter and salt to suit. Meat liquors 
are excellent for this purpose. 

Fresh Succotash is made of the green beans 
broken up fine, and corn cut from the cob, 
cooked together and seasoned just as the cook¬ 
ing is completed, with cream, butter, salt and 
paprika. Shell beans may be used instead of 
the green beans. A good seasoning is made by 
cutting up fine a slice of bacon and boiling for 
twenty minutes; when the succotash is cooked 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 321 

add the bacon and the water in which it was 
cooked. 

Prune Whip is made as follows: Make a 
thin custard of one pint of milk, yolk one egg, 
one-third cup sugar, one-half heaping tea¬ 
spoon corn starch, one teaspoonful vanilla. 
Cool and add one-half pint cream and one- 
half pound cooked prune pulp. Freeze in ice¬ 
cream freezer moderately stiff. 


Menu Number Five 


Breakfast 

Cooked Whole Wheat Cereal 
White Flour Biscuit 


Butter 


Cream 


Bacon, Nuts, or Cheese 
Cereal Coffee 

Lunch (No. 1) 

Dish of Fruit with Cream or Ice-Cream 
or (No. 2) 

Hard Toast, Well Buttered 
Cream Cheese (three ounces), or Nut Meats 
Glass Milk or Cup Cereal Coffee 


!Dinner 


Vegetable Curry 

Spinach, or Other Greens; Combination Salad 
Ice-Cream 


or (Fish Dinner) 


Tomato Soup 


Spanish Salad 


Baked White Fish or Other Fish with To¬ 
mato Sauce or Lemon 

Carrots and Peas Spinach or Parsnips 

Grapefruit 


322 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Menu Number Five 

White Flour Biscuits may be made the same 
as the ordinary biscuits, except white flour 
alone may be used, or one cup of bran may be 
added to three cups of the white flour. When 
using bran, use a little more baking powder. 

Vegetable Curry , for serving four persons 
liberally, may be made as follows: Cook thor¬ 
oughly one and one-half cups of rice. Just be¬ 
fore the rice is done, take a half can of toma¬ 
toes, from which the juice has been drained, or 
the equivalent in fresh tomatoes; mash, heat; 
add one pint of well cooked string beans, most 
of the fluid being cooked out, and, if desired, 
one cup of peas, out of which the juice has been 
cooked; also any other cold, left-over vegeta¬ 
bles ; and one cup of strong meat liquor from a 
roast or boil of the day before; four teaspoon¬ 
fuls of grated cheese, salt, paprika and curry 
powder to suit. These ingredients should be 
mixed thoroughly and heated together to the 
boiling point. When the rice is cooked, line 
the edges and cover the bottom of a chop plate 


323 


324 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


or a vegetable dish with it, and pour over the 
mixed vegetables; sprinkle with a little grated 
cheese, brown quickly in the oven and serve 
immediately. The portions served may be 
large, since this dish constitutes practically 
a meal. 

Spanish Salad . For each person take a slice 
one-fourth inch thick of a large-sized Spanish 
onion. On top of this spread about one-fourth 
inch thick pimento cream cheese, and serve on 
a lettuce leaf. Over the whole pour a dressing 
made of a little cider vinegar, salt, paprika, one 
small Mexican red pepper chopped fine, and 
olive oil. 

In Baking Fish successfully it is important 
to avoid overcooking, which leaves it dry and 
unpalatable. It is also important to serve the 
fish just as soon as it is done. 

Tomato Sauce is made by running through 
the colander two cups of washed tomatoes and 
adding salt and paprika to taste. If the toma¬ 
toes are not sufficiently sour add a few drops of 
lemon juice. 

Carrots and Peas when cooked together 
make a dish both unusually attractive and pal¬ 
atable. They are to be cooked in a little clear 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 325 


water until done, when a dressing* of cream 
with the seasoning may be added. 

Spinach is best cooked by being steam- 
cooked or cooked in a pressure cooker; when 
using the latter take care to avoid over-cook¬ 
ing. Spinach is one of the most valuable of 
our leaf vegetables, by reason of the large 
amount of iron which it carries. This valuable 
food material, however, is lost when the spinach 
is cooked through one or two waters and the 
water drained off. A simple way to cook spin¬ 
ach and still retain all its food elements is to 
wash, put in an ordinary pot and bruise with 
a potato masher until sufficient juice has ex¬ 
uded and starts to cooking. From this on the 
spinach can easily be cooked in its own juice. 


Menu Number Six 
Breakfast 

Emmer Cereal Cream 

Corn Gems Butter Stewed Figs 

Bacon 

Cereal Coffee, Cream and Sugar 
Lunch (No. 1) 

Two or Three Baked Apples Cream 

Cereal Coffee, or Glass of Milk 

or (No. 2) 

Cream of Pea Soup 
Hard Toast Butter 

Dish Prunes 

Dinner (No. 1) 

Beef Pot Roast with Gravy 
Combination Salad 
Cauliflower or Buttered Beets 
Carrots or Browned Parsnips 
Pineapple 

or (No. 2) 

Broiled Hamburger Steak 
Creamed Onions or Stewed Tomatoes 
Spinach or Peas 

Head Lettuce with Thousand Island Dressing 
Queen Ann White Canned Cherries 

326 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Menu Number Six 

The 'Ernmer Cereal should be cooked three 
hours in a double boiler. The mistake is fre¬ 
quently made of cooking this class of cereal too 
short a time. A sufficient amount for several 
mornings may be cooked at one time, and what 
is left over warmed each morning until used. 
Reheating improves the flavor. 

Corn Gems are made according to recipe in 
Menu Number One. 

The Stewed Figs may be prepared from 
either the black or the brown stewing figs, the 
former preferred; they should be cooked down 
well, when very little or no sugar will be 
needed. 

The Baked Apples may be prepared by tak¬ 
ing a good sweet cooking apple, of which there 
are many varieties, taking out a large core, fill¬ 
ing the centers with raisins or figs and baking 
without sugar. 

The Cream of Pea Soup is made by cooking 
the peas thorough^ (canned peas may be 
used), mashing fine and adding equal amounts 


327 


328 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


of milk, a lump of butter, salt to suit and a lit¬ 
tle paprika. 

Beef Pot Boast . Select a good shoulder 
piece or rump roast. Sear well the entire sur¬ 
face in a hot frying pan. Then place in a hot 
kettle with a cup of boiling water, and simmer 
slowly until quite tender, allowing the water to 
boil away and be replenished two or three times 
—using hot water always. After the first half- 
hour’s cooking add salt and pepper to taste. 
When it has “browned down” the last time re¬ 
move the meat from the pot, add a pinch of 
powdered sage, a tablespoon of gelatine that 
has been dissolved and a cup or two of cold 
water. Let boil up for a few minutes. This 
will make a delicious brown gravy, smooth and 
of a nice consistency requiring no flour thick¬ 
ening. 

Broiled Hamburger SteaU . The required 
amount of round steak, trimmed and ground. 
Place on meat board, knead and roll until 
smooth. Mould into shape of beef filet, about 
an inch thick. Broil the same as any steak, 
over coals or in gas broiling oven. Have heat 
sufficient to sear and seal the outside immedi¬ 
ately. Juices will be retained and it will hold 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 329 


together perfectly, so prepared and cooked. 
When done, rare or medium, season with salt 
and pepper and serve with parsley butter. 

Thousand Island Salad Dressing . Place 
the yolks of two fresh eggs in a very cold bowl. 
Beat until thick. Add, a few drops at a time, 
one-half cup olive oil. When this process is fin¬ 
ished add two tablespoons each of cider vinegar 
and lemon juice, one-half teaspoon salt and a 
dash of white pepper. In another cold bowl 
chop fine one tablespoon of chives, one table¬ 
spoon pimentoes, and one hard-boiled egg. 
Add to first mixture gradually. Serve with 
crisp head lettuce. 


AN AUTUMN MENU 
Number Seven 


Breakfast (No. 1) 

A Cereal with Cream 

Hard Toast or Biscuits Butter 

Nuts Cereal Coffee 

or (No. 2) 

Two Eggs 

Two or Three Slices of Bacon 
Hard Toast, Buttered Cereal Coffee 

Lunch 

Combination Salad Buttermilk 

'Dinner 

Roasting Ears 
Toast or Hygienic Biscuits 
Two Cooked Non-Starchy Vegetables (except 
Tomatoes) 

Gelatin Dessert 
Cereal Coffee 


. 330 


AN AUTUMN MENU 
Number Eight 


Breakfast 

Cantaloupe Fresh Fruit with Cream 

Nuts Glass of Milk 

Lunch 

A Cream Soup 
Hard Toast Butter 

Bacon 

Roasting Ears with Butter 
Cereal Coffee 

Dinner 

Lamb, Mutton, Chicken or Fish 
Two Cooked Non-Starchy Vegetables 
Combination Salad 
Peaches and Cream 
Cereal Coffee 


331 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Autumn Menus Numbers Seven 
and Eight 

Corn should be eaten when young and juicy. 
It should be put to cook in boiling water and 
should he boiled from seven to fifteen min¬ 
utes; salt should not be added to the water 
while cooking; nor should the corn, when 
cooked, be allowed to stand in the water. Corn 
is delicious when roasted in the oven in its 
shucks. Butter and salt may be eaten on the 
corn, and it should be chewed thoroughly, until 
each grain is broken up and dissolved. If eaten 
in this way about all the corn may be taken 
that is desired. 

In both of these menus there is one light 
meal; in one it is given at noon, in the other it 
is given in the morning. Almost every one, 
especially in the summer, can take in two meals 
all of the food that is necessary. 

The Eggs may be cooked any way except 
fried; soft boiled or coddled are best. 

Buttermilk is a valuable summer food for 
most persons. That which is artificially pre- 

332 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 333 


pared and contains all of the fat of the milk is 
superior to the churn buttermilk. The culture 
in tablet form with the directions for making 
the buttermilk may be obtained at any drug 
store. 

Fresh Fruit includes any on the market ex¬ 
cept the banana. Cream and milk may be 
eaten with it. The acid will curdle the milk, 
but this curdling is the first step in the diges¬ 
tion of the milk. 


Menu Number Nine 


For the Man Who Likes a Light Breakfast 


Breakfast 

Fruit, any of the cooked fruits, such as baked 
apples, stewed figs, prunes, or any other 
dried fruit, with cream; also small 
portion of grapefruit, or an 
orange if desired. 

Nuts, either Almonds, Pecans or Filberts 
Cereal Coffee with Cream and Sugar 

Lunch (No. 1) 

Cream Tomato Soup Hard Toast, Buttered 
Celery Olives 

Boiled Rice Butter 

Canned Pears 

or (No. 2) 

Oyster Stew Hard Toast, Buttered 

Celery Olives 

Slice of Pineapple 

Dinner 

Head Lettuce with Cottage Cheese Dressing 
Baked Potatoes with Butter 
Mashed Turnips 
Hot Buttered Beets 
Gelatin Dessert with Whipped Cream 


334s 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Menu Number Nine 

The Dried Fruits should first be washed 
thoroughly and then put to soak for twelve 
hours, or long enough to permit the fruit to 
soften, after which it should be put on to cook 
in the same water—it should not boil, but just 
simmer slowly until quite tender. Do not make 
the mistake of draining off the water in which 
the fruit is soaked, as it contains much of the 
natural sugar and flavor. 

Nuts must be chewed well—about twenty to 
twenty-five is the usual number to be eaten at 
a meal. 

Cream Tomato Soup for a family of six: 
A three-pound can, or one quart of tomatoes, 
one and a half pints of milk, lump of butter the 
size of a small egg, salt, paprika, soda. Cook 
the tomatoes and put through a colander if de¬ 
sired. Heat the milk just to the boiling point, 
but take care it does not boil, stir the soda into 
the tomatoes, after which mix milk and toma¬ 
toes and add the seasoning. The amount of 
soda needed depends upon the acidity of the 


385 


336 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


tomatoes; by tasting the tomatoes one can soon 
learn by experience the amount needed. 
Enough soda should always he used to keep 
the soup from curdling. Do not mix the milk 
and tomatoes until just before the soup is to 
he served. 

Oyster Stew . Don’t cook the oysters in the 
milk. Take half milk and cream, heat almost 
to the boiling point, add salt and pepper, then 
add the oysters and their liquor. Heat the stew 
again almost to the boiling point, add a lump 
of butter, and serve. 

The Lettuce should be crisp. The cottage 
cheese dressing is made by adding to a teacup¬ 
ful of the cheese one-fourth of a cup of cream, 
a little salad dressing, salt and paprika. 
Chopped watercress also makes a pleasing ad¬ 
dition. Olive oil may also be added. Stir the 
ingredients well and serve liberally on the 
lettuce. 

Baked Potatoes. To hake potatoes well is 
not so simple a matter as it may seem. Select a 
medium-sized potato, scrub well, as all of the 
potato except the thin outside paper-like cov¬ 
ering is to he eaten; the most valuable portion 


DAILY BILL OF FARE 337 


of the potato lies just under this skin and is 
usually lost in peeling. The potatoes should 
he baked in a moderate oven; when well done 
pierce the skin in several places with a sharp 
fork and allow them to stand in the oven fif¬ 
teen minutes before serving. With most po¬ 
tatoes this procedure releases the moisture and 
leaves them mealy and dry. 


HOLIDAY DINNER MENUS 

I 

Gelatin Salad with Mayonnaise Dressing 
Cream Celery Bouillon or Oyster Soup 
Roast Turkey Cranberry Sauce 

Spinach or Cauliflower 
Peas or String Beans 

Baked Squash Thin Giblet Gravy 

Ice-Cream with Whipped Cream 
Nuts Raisins Figs 

Cereal Coffee 

II 

Oyster Cocktail 

Olives, Ripe or Green Celery 

Head Lettuce with Mayonnaise Dressing 
Roast Turkey or Young Pig 
Parsnips or Spinach 
Carrots or Cauliflower 

Baked Sweet Potatoes and Thin Giblet Gravy 
Baked Apples with Whipped Cream 
Nuts Figs 

Cereal Coffee 

III 

Chicken Bouillon Celery and Olives 

Roast Turkey and Cranberry Sauce 
Parsnips or Spinach 
Cauliflower or Turnips and Carrots 
Baked Sweet Potatoes 
Thin Giblet Gravy 
Combination Vegetable Salad 
Apple Dessert with Whipped Cream 
Nuts Fresh Fruits 

Small Cereal Coffee 
338 


RECIPES AND DIRECTIONS 
Holiday Dinner Menus 

The Gelatin Salad is to be made of the gela¬ 
tin, salad vegetables and salad seasoning, pre¬ 
pared in individual molds. 

Celery Bouillon: Dice celery, boil until ten¬ 
der, mash through sieve, add cream, butter and 
other seasoning. 

Oyster Cocktail: Made by placing three 
medium-sized oysters in a cocktail glass, cov¬ 
ering with cocktail sauce with a dash of horse¬ 
radish added. 

Mayonnaise Dressing is made by beating 
into the yolk of an egg sufficient olive oil added 
a drop at a time to make a thick mixture. A 
little lemon juice, salt and paprika are added. 

The Cranberry Sauce is made in the usual 
way except that sufficient baking soda to neu¬ 
tralize the acid of the berries should be stirred 
into the sauce just as the cooking is about com¬ 
pleted, then add but a small amount of sugar 
to sweeten to suit. The less sugar present in a 
dinner of this sort, the better. 

The Turkey may be roasted with the stuff- 


339 


840 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


ing, but the stuffing should not be eaten. It is 
practically indigestible. 

The Vegetables should be steam-cooked or 
boiled until well done in a little clear water; 
after being taken from the fire they may be 
dressed with melted butter or from the drip¬ 
pings from the turkey. 

The Combination Salad may be made of let¬ 
tuce, canned or fresh tomatoes, celery, chopped 
apples and cabbage, radishes, peppers—any 
palatable combination of these or other fresh 
vegetables dressed with a little vinegar and 
olive oil, salt and pepper, or mayonnaise 
dressing. 

The Apple Dessert is made as follows: Se¬ 
lect large apples, wash but do not peel, take 
out large cores, fill the centers with equal parts 
of shredded cocoanut, figs and raisins chopped 
together, with a few pecan nuts added. Bake 
without sugar. After taking out of the oven 
put a drop or two of vanilla flavoring on the 
center of each apple. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE DAILY EXERCISE PROGRAM 

Exercise, to be of any permanent value, 
must be regularly followed. Spasmodic, ir¬ 
regular exercise does more harm than good. 
The dosage should be small, but oft repeated. 
The movements used, in the words of a famous 
teacher, should be “safe, short, easy, bene¬ 
ficial and pleasing.” No apparatus should be 
requisite. The aim should be to conserve en¬ 
ergy and develop vitality. Any system is 
wrong which consumes much energy or lowers 
vitality. The business man in modern life has 
no need for large muscles. Therefore, heavy 
weights, apparatus, and long sustained muscu¬ 
lar effort are contra-indicated, because their 
chief aim is muscular development. Tensing 
the muscles, or holding the muscles in a fixed 
position and vibrating them is harmful because 
it uses up nervous energy too rapidly. 

The dosage of exercise should be chiefly di- 


Note— This chapter is contributed by Dr. William B. Newhall. 

341 


342 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


rected to the larger muscle groups. Most men 
and some women use their arms and legs 
enough, so the emphasis should be placed on 
the muscle-groups and organs of the middle 
third of the body. Each period of exercise 
should leave one in a gentle perspiration, 
breathing deeply, and with a feeling of exhila¬ 
ration. One should always stop short of fa¬ 
tigue, especially in early morning exercises. In 
exercises designed to develop vitality, little 
mental concentration is desirable. The atten¬ 
tion should be fixed only to the point of obtain¬ 
ing good form. 

The best time to exercise is in the late after¬ 
noon, but each day’s order should include 
enough early morning exercise to render the 
body flexible, clear it of accumulated toxins, 
and flood it with vitalized blood. In exercis¬ 
ing, wear as little clothing as is consistent with 
good taste. Keep the waist line free. Wear 
loose slippers. Have the room comfortably 
warm, flooded with fresh air—the sun shining 
in, if possible. Devote from five to ten min¬ 
utes to each day’s order of exercises. The ex¬ 
amples given can all be done in six minutes 
without hurrying. Exercise slowly at first. 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 343 


until the form of the movement is learned; then 
with more speed and vigor. As the exercises 
become familiar, increase the dosage but do not 
devote more than ten minutes to any one pe¬ 
riod. Better repeat the periods at intervals 
during the day if more exercise is needed. 

At first, some of the movements may cause 
muscular soreness. A warm bath and con¬ 
tinuance of the exercise will soon remedy the 
discomfort. Do not give up. Exercising 
lightly and regularly is the quickest and surest 
way to overcome the soreness. A sponge or 
shower bath should, if possible, be taken in con¬ 
nection with each daily exercise period, pre¬ 
ceding it, if in the morning on arising; follow¬ 
ing it, if later in the day. A dry rub with a 
coarse towel is a fair substitute. 

In the following pages will be found an or¬ 
der of exercises for each day in the week. This 
is the best way to use them. If desired, each 
day’s order may be used for one week. A con¬ 
scientious effort to follow the program out¬ 
lined will speedily demonstrate its value, and 
result in a clear eye, springy step, and gen¬ 
eral feeling of exuberant vitality. 


344 TAKING IT ON HIGH 
First Day's Order 

1. Position: Stand erect, feet at an angle of 
forty-five degrees, heels together, hands at 
sides, head up, chin drawn well back. 

2. Inhale deeply, count ten, exhale slowly; 
five times. 

3. Raise arms forward (count 1), swing to 
sides at horizontal (count 2), return forward 
(count 3), lower to sides (count 4). Repeat 
eight times. 

4. Raise arms forward (1), upward to over¬ 
head (2), return to forward (3), lower to 
sides (4). Repeat eight times. 

5. Place hands on hips. Raise right leg 
forward, knee stiff (1), swing leg back as far 
as possible (2), swing leg forward (3), lower 
to floor (4). Repeat four times. 

6. Same exercise as No. 5, but with left leg. 

7. Plands at sides. Bend body forward, 
hands hanging loose, knees straight (1), raise 
arms to sides horizontal, keeping waist bent 
(2), lower arms (3), raise body to posi¬ 
tion (4). Repeat six times. 

8. Hands on hips. Bend body to right (1) , 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 345 


bend to extreme left (2), bend to extreme 
right (3), resume position (4). Eight times. 

9. Hands on hips. Stationary run. Run 
on balls of feet, raising knees fairly high. 
Keep in one spot. One hundred steps. 

10. Inhale deeply, count five, exhale slowly; 
six times. 

Second Day’s Order 

1. Position: Stand erect, heels together, toes 
turned out, hands at sides, head up, chin drawn 
back. 

2. Inhale deeply, at same time raising arms 
forward upward slowly to full extension over¬ 
head (1), exhale slowly and lower arms (2). 
Six times. 

3. Raise arms forward and take one full 
step forward with right foot (1), swing arms 
to sides horizontal (2), swing arms to front 
horizontal (3), lower arms and step back to 
position (4). Repeat with left foot forward. 
Eight times. 

4. Raise arms forward and rise on toes (1), 
raise arms upward to full extension overhead, 
and step out well to right (2), lower arms to 


346 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


front horizontal and step back, keeping on 
toes (3), lower arms and sink on heels (4). 
Repeat, but stepping out to left side. Eight 
times. 

5. Raise right leg forward and right arm 
forward (1), swing both arm and leg back¬ 
ward as far as possible (2), swing forward 
(3), return to position (4). Four times. 

6. Same as No. 5, but with left arm and leg. 
Four times. 

7. Rend body forward, arms hanging (1), 
swing arms to right side and twist body to 
right (2), swing arms down and untwist body 
(3), return to position (4). Repeat, but swing 
and twist to left. Six times. 

8. Hands on hips. Bend body to right as 
far as possible and raise left leg sidewise as 
high as you can (1), return to position (2). 
Repeat, but to opposite side (3) and re¬ 
turn (4). Six times. 

9. Hands on hips. Stationary run. Keep 
knees stiff and raise feet well up in front. 
Run on toes. One hundred steps. 

10. Inhale deeply, at same time raising arms 
to full extension overhead. Exhale slowly and 
lower arms. Five times. 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 347 


Third Bay's Order 

1. Position: Stand with feet spread wide 
apart, body erect, arms bent, fists closed and 
on chest. This is the fundamental position for 
the following exercises. 

2. Inhale deeply and draw elbows well back, 
count six, exhale slowly. Five times. 

3. Thrust arms forward hard (1), bring 
hands back to chest (2), thrust arms overhead 
(3), return to chest (4). Eight times. 

4. Thrust arms sidewise (1), bring hands to 
chest (2), thrust arms downward behind hips 
(3), bring hands back to chest (4). Eight 
times. 

5. Bend right knee, keeping left straight 
(1), swing weight over to left knee and bend 
it, keeping right knee straight (2), swing 
weight over to right knee as in count 1 (3), 
return to position (4). Eight times. 

6. Swing hands down between legs as far 
as you can (1), return hands to chest (2), 
thrust arms forward (3), return to posi¬ 
tion (4). Eight times. 

7. Swing hands down between legs (1), 
swing hands to full extension overhead (2), 


348 TAKING IT ON HIGH 

swing down between legs (3), return to posi¬ 
tion (4). Eight times. 

8. Swing hands down between legs (1), 
swing arms up forward and open arms wide 
(2), swing down between legs (3), return to 
position (4). Eight times. 

9. Swing hands down between legs (1), 
swing as far to right as possible (2), swing 
down between legs (3), return to position (4). 
Eight times. 

10. Inhale deeply, pummel chest lightly and 
exhale. Five times. 

Fourth Day's Order 

1. Position: Stand erect, heels together, 
fists closed, hands on chest. 

2. Inhale deeply, at same time extending 
arms to sides horizontal, exhale and return 
hands to chest. Five times. 

3. Thrust right hand forward and at same 
time take one full step forward with right foot 
(1), return to position (2), thrust left hand 
forward and take left step forward (3), re¬ 
turn to position (4). Eight times. 

4. Thrust right hand sidewise and take one 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 


349 


full step to right side (1), return to position 
(2), thrust and step to left side (3), return to 
position (4). Eight times. 

5. Thrust right hand overhead and take one 
full step backward with right foot (1), return 
to position (2), thrust left hand overhead and 
step back with left foot (3), return to posi¬ 
tion (4). Eight times. 

6. Bend forward, keeping knees straight, 
and touch toes (1), return to position with 
hands on chest (2), thrust both hands forward 
with right (left) foot (3), return to posi¬ 
tion (4). Eight times. 

7. Bend forward and touch toes (1), return 
to position with hands on chest (2), thrust both 
hands to sides horizontal and step to right 
(left) side (3), return to position (4). Eight 
times. 

8. Bend forward and touch toes (1), return 
to position (2), thrust arms to full extension 
overhead and at same time jump feet wide 
apart (3), return to position, jumping feet 
together (4). Eight times. 

9. Bend forward and touch toes (1), swing 
hands to full extension overhead (2), swing 


350 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


hands down and touch toes (3), return to posi¬ 
tion (4). Eight times. 

10. Inhale deeply, at same time raising arms 
high overhead, exhale and lower arms. Five 
times. 

Fifth Day's Order 

1. Position: Hands on floor, twelve inches 
in front of feet; knees bent, weight evenly dis¬ 
tributed between hands and feet. 

2. Inhale deeply and at same time rise to 
feet, exhale and resume crouch. Six times. 

3. Extend right leg backward (1), return 
to crouch (2), extend left leg backward (3), 
return to crouch (4). Eight times. 

4. Extend both legs backward (1), resume 
crouch (2). Four times. 

5. Extend right leg straight to right side 
(1), resume crouch (2), extend left leg to left 
side (3), resume crouch (4). Six times. 

6. Position: Hands on floor, legs extended 
straight back, weight on hands and toes. Raise 
right leg up as high as possible (1), lower to 
floor (2), raise left leg (3), lower to floor (4)', 
Six times. 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 


351 


7. Position as in No. 6. Jump feet wide 
apart (1), return to position (2). Eight times. 

8. Position same as in No. 6. Bend arms 
and touch chest to floor (1), return to posi¬ 
tion (2). Four times. 

9. Position same as in No. 6. Jump hands 
and feet wide apart (1), return to position (2). 
Six times. 

10. Stand erect. Inhale deeply, exhale slow¬ 
ly. Five times. 

Sixth Day's Order 

1. Position: Sit on the floor, body erect, legs 
extended, hands on thighs. 

2. Inhale deeply, at same time raising hands 
high overhead, exhale, lower arms. Five times. 

3. Place hands on floor at sides. Raise body 
until supported only on hands and heels (1), 
lower to floor (2). Eight times. 

4. Position as in No. 3. Raise both legs six 
inches above floor (1), separate legs wide (2), 
close legs (3), lower to floor (4). Six times. 

5. Position as in No. 3. Raise right leg as 
high as possible (1), lower to floor (2), raise 
left leg (3), lower to floor (4). Eight times. 


352 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


6. Lie flat on back, arms extended in line 
with body. Raise right leg straight up, knee 
stiff, toe pointed (1), lower to floor (2), raise 
left leg (3), lower to floor (4). Eight times. 

7. Position as in No. 6. Draw knees to 
chest and clasp with arms (1), extend legs and 
unclasp arms (2). Eight times. 

8. Position: Lie flat on abdomen, arms ex¬ 
tended in line with body. Raise right leg and 
left arm, keeping knee and elbow stiff (1), 
lower to floor (2), raise left leg and right arm 
(3), lower to floor (4). Eight times 

9. Position as in No. 8, but with palms of 
hands on floor at sides of chest. Raise body 
until supported on hands and toes (1), jump 
feet together (3), lower to floor (4). Six 
times. 

10. Position: Lie flat on hack, arms ex¬ 
tended at sides. Inhale deeply arid extend 
arms overhead, exhale and bring arms to hips. 
Five times. 


Seventh Day's Order 
Occupational Exercises 

1. Position: Stand erect, heels together* 
chin drawn back, hands at sides. 


EXERCISE PROGRAM 353 


2. Sifting Sand. Bend knees until sitting 
on heels, at same time grasp double handful of 
sand (imaginary) from pile between feet (1), 
straighten knees, stand erect and lift sand high 
overhead (2). Eight times. 

3. Swaying Pole . Hands high overhead, 
fingers interlaced, sway to right side (1), sway 
to extreme left (2). Eight times. 

4. Chopping Block, Both hands at right 
side, grasping ax. Swing ax. Swing ax up 
over right shoulder and strike left oblique, at 
the same time stepping to left oblique (1), re¬ 
turn to position (2). Repeat to right. Eight 
times. 

5. Pumping . Both hands at chest, fists 
closed, palms down. Push arms down hard 
and bend knees (1), return to position (2). 
Eight times. 

6 . Tearing Cloth. Position as in No. 5. 
Swing arms to sides horizontal and at same 
time step right foot well forward (1), return 
to position (2), swing arms to sides and step 
left foot forward (3), return to position (4). 
Eight times. 

7. Stirring Paste. Hands on hips. Bend 
forward at hips, to right, backward, to left. 


354 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


making head describe a circle (1), circle head 
to left (2). Eight times. 

8. Army Bend . Hands extended high over¬ 
head. Bend at waist, keeping knees straight 
and touch toes (1), return hands to overhead 
and as far back as possible (2). Eight times. 

9. Flag Waving. Left hand on hip, right 
hand straight overhead. Make right hand de¬ 
scribe circle three feet in diameter, circling at 
hips (1). Repeat with left hand overhead (2). 
Eight times. 

10. Inhale deeply, at same time raising arms 
sidewise to overhead, exhale slowly and lower 
hands down in front of and close to the body. 
Six times. 


CHAPTER XXIII 




THE PLAN OF A DAY 

Days are the stuff that life is made of. He 
who fails to make his days count, shortens his 
life. Happy is the man who lives y fully, ac¬ 
tively, usefully, zestfully, each day. Even the 
dumb animal, hunted, wounded, pursued, 
dragging itself wretchedly to some hole or cor¬ 
ner, feels by instinct that there is something 
fine and worth preserving in the texture of this 
thing we call living. 

So our days are given to us to make what 
we can of them in the process of existence—the 
business of living. To-morrow will be another 
day, another life-jewel placed in our hands: 
what shall we do with it? What can we make 
of it more than the dumb beast does? 

The first requisite is a plan. We can not 
build a house without a plan; no more can we 
build a day without a plan. The purpose of 
this chapter is to give you some hints as to how 
to make a day-plan. No one plan will suit all 


355 


356 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


people. The same plan will hardly suit two 
people. You must make your own plan; with¬ 
out a plan you can not build a day. But cer¬ 
tain features must be common to all good day- 
plans ; some of these we desire to suggest. 

The right time to begin a day is fairly early 
the evening before. The night’s sleep is the 
parent of the day’s work. Sleep enough. The 
alarm clock, like other stimulants, should be 
avoided. Nature has given you an alarm clock; 
wind it up by going to bed at nine or ten 
o’clock, and you won’t need a Big Ben. 

Don’t begin your mental day by mulling 
over your cares and worries. When conscious¬ 
ness has come to you through your natural 
awakening, fill your lungs with a few deep 
breaths of good oxygen, and your mind with 
the best thoughts you can make real in your 
consciousness. Put off your problems till 
later; strive now to get your mentality in tune 
for the day’s work. Now is the time to strike 
the keynotes of poise, power, self-control, and 
idealism that shall guide you through the day. 

On rising, begin to live right away. There 
are some very pleasant little things one can do 
in this part of the day, in place of the drowsy. 


THE PLAN OF A DAY 357 


half-alive meandering 1 that uses up the first 
half-hour for many folks. Let’s begin by wak¬ 
ing up the skin with a brisk rub or a smart 
sponge bath. Don’t go to extremes by having 
the water too cold. When you have your skin 
awake and alive, next get the muscular sys¬ 
tem and circulation into the game by five or ten 
minutes of brisk exercise. When you have 
done this, you will find that you are pretty well 
alive all over and all through your body. With 
the skin tingling with pink well-being, the 
lungs filled with glad morning air, and the 
muscles surging with healthfully pulsing 
blood, you are ready to turn the machine over 
to the driver for the first morning run, the 
study-hour. 

The study-hour is not for students only, nor 
for such people alone as ministers and writers. 
It is time well spent for every man who courts 
success. 

We do not mean that the study-hour should 
be a literal hour of sixty minutes; allot what 
time you can to it; if you can make it a full 
hour, so much the better. It should be a pre¬ 
cious time, set apart from the distracting influ¬ 
ences of the day’s work, which you can devote 


358 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


to the mastery of principles underlying that 
work. What you do in this hour should push 
back your horizon, expand your outlook, 
broaden your views. It should lift you out of 
your rut; if you let the rut get deep it will be 
your grave. Avoid using your study-hour on 
detail work. Try to reserve it for the big 
things, the fundamentals. The test of the 
right use of the mental morning-hour is this: 
Has it stimulated and enriched your mind and 
spirit? Has it so fortified you that you are safe 
against the shocks and jars of the day? Has it 
tuned up your courage and will-power so that 
you can plow through the tasks and problems 
of the day, on high gear? 

Regarding breakfast, we suggest three 
things. First, eat breakfast. The no-break- 
fast plan is illogical and unphysiological. All 
animals eat in the morning. Secondly, take 
plenty of time for breakfast. For that matter, 
no meal should be eaten in a rush; but the 
temptation to bolt the meal seems greatest at 
breakfast-time for most people. Thirdly, let 
the breakfast be an easy job for the digestive 
machinery, both in quantity and quality. 
You’ve got other more important things to dq 


THE PLAN OF A DAY 359 


to-day; so don’t invest a big lot of your force 
in the digesting of your breakfast. 

Breakfast-time is the time to begin the ap¬ 
plication of another principle if you want to 
build a good day—don’t tamper with your 
nervous system by either stimulants or seda¬ 
tives. Avoid that morning coffee, and omit 
that after-breakfast smoke. 

Another principle of day-planning comes 
into play after breakfast—the principle of 
variety, the alternation of varied activities. 
You’ve already had exercise, mental work and 
breakfast—now walk part or all of the way to 
work, if possible. Walk moderately; don’t 
rush. 

Get to your work in good physical trim and 
in good mental poise. Now you are ready for 
three or four hours of high-pressure mental 
work. Your machine is in good shape, and you 
can “step on her” with safety. Even here, 
however, “safety first” should be your rule; 
have the machine under control at all times. A 
good deal of the “rush” and “hustle” of the 
American man of affairs is like that of 
Chaucer’s lawyer, who always seemed busier 
than he was. By planning your work intelli- 


360 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


gently and deliberately, you can cut out lost 
motion and save time. Many a man can in¬ 
crease the amount of work accomplished in a 
day if the first half-hour is given to planning 
it carefully. 

Two ten-minute or even five-minute recesses, 
at ten-thirty and three-thirty, with deep breath¬ 
ing of fresh air, a good drink of water, and 
complete relaxation from mental pressure, will 
in most cases be a highly profitable expendi¬ 
ture of time—again the alternation of activi¬ 
ties. Certainly there should be a release from 
pressure at the middle of the day. Eating 
lunch is not the most important reason for the 
noon hour away from the desk. If the lunch 
is eaten under pressure, gulped on the run, as 
is so often the case, it is worse than no lunch. 
Leave the office and its business> relax the 
mind, get a bit of exercise, and eat moderately 
and deliberately. This sane lunch-hour pro¬ 
gram will tune up the machine for the after¬ 
noon’s run. 

The total amount of first-class mental labor 
that the average man can perform is not over 
nine hours a day—eight hours is a safer figure. 
More than this, can, of course, be done under 


THE PLAN OF A DAY 361 


stress—anybody can run pretty fast for a lit¬ 
tle while. But any man should figure his work¬ 
ing capacity and that of his employees, not in 
terms of a day, but in terms of a year or a pe¬ 
riod of years. By and large, the man who is 
forced, or who forces himself, beyond eight or 
nine hours a day will accomplish less in a year 
than the man who holds himself within these 
limits. England found this out during the war. 

When you quit, quit. Don’t carry home odd 
jobs or business worries from the office. Shed 
them with your office coat. The late afternoon 
is a fine time for exercise, especially recrea¬ 
tional exercise. It is a splendid time to hoe 
your garden and weed your brain. \ ou will 
make in the end by bending your plans, if con¬ 
ditions possibly allow, for some kind of outdoor 
relaxation and good time between work and 
dinner. 

The evening dinner should be the main meal 
of the well-planned day. But don’t shovel in 
too much fuel; remember that a thin fire makes 
the most steam. Season your dinner with 
jollity and pleasant social intercourse. If you 
have come through your well-planned day “on 
high,” as we have suggested, and have not 


362 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


abused your machine, you will have enthusiasm 
and good-temper and nerve-force in abundance 
at dinner-time, to devote to the helpful en¬ 
couragement and good-cheer which you owe 
your family; and Jimmie won’t whisper to 
Susie in awe-stricken tones, “Look out for pa; 
he’s got a grouch to-night.” 

The evening time should be your free time, 
your leeway time. It can be spent in a variety 
of ways—in reading, or in social intercourse, or 
in riding your hobby (and you ought to have 
a hobby), or in any one of a hundred ways. 
It ought to be free from unwholesome stimula¬ 
tion, physical or mental, and ought to end 
early enough to insure a full night’s sleep. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


PRACTICAL WORKING SCHEDULES 

See if any of these fit your case. If not, 
select the one which comes nearest to it, and 
adapt it to your particular needs. Very few 
changes will be necessary. 

Daily Schedule for the Professional Man 

6:00 a. m. Rise; sponge bath; exercise. 

6:30 a. m. Morning toilet; shave and dress; 
short walk. 

7:00 a. m. Morning study hour. 

8:00 a. m. Breakfast. 

8 :30 a. m. Read paper, and plan the day’s 
work. 

9:00 a. m. Leave for office. 

9:30 a. m. Look over the day’s appoint¬ 
ments ; read mail. 

10:00 a.m. Begin on appointments, 

12:30 p.m. Lunch. 


363 


364 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


1:00 p. m. Walk fifteen minutes; rest fifteen 
minutes. 

1:30 p. m. Begin on appointments. 

4:30 p. m. Dictate letters and clean up the 
day’s work. 

5 :00 p. m. Leave for home. 

5:30 p. m. Brisk walk; play and recreation. 

6:00 p. m. Dinner. 

7:00 P. m. Rest period. 

7:30 p.m. Recreation—Twice a week (not 
to exceed) theater or social function. (Five 
days of week spend period 7:30 to 9:00 get¬ 
ting acquainted with your family.) 

9 :00 p. m. Light reading. 

9:30 p. m. Exercise and prepare for bed. 

10:00 p.m. Retire j use auto-suggestion; 
let go. 

Daily Schedule for the Business Man 

6:00 a. m. Rise; bath and rub-down; exer¬ 
cise ; toilet; shave; dress. 

6:45 a. m. Map out the day’s work. 

7:00 a. m. Study period; personal develop¬ 
ment (memory, public speaking, etc.). 

7:30 a* M, Breakfast. 


WORKING SCHEDULES 365 


8:00 a.m. Leave for office. Walk part way 
—at least fifteen minutes. 

8:30 a. m. Read mail; then make a specific 
list of the ten most important things to be done 
during the day; proceed with the forenoon s 
work. 

12:00 m. Lunch; once or twice weekly at¬ 
tend Monday Luncheon of Commercial Asso¬ 
ciation or other club lunch. 

1 :30 p. m. Brisk walk. 

1:45 p. m. After-lunch rest. 

2:00 p. m. Begin afternoon’s work. 

5:30 p. m. Leave for home. 

6:00 p. m. Lie down and rest for fifteen min¬ 
utes. 

6:15 p.m. Dinner. 

7:15 p. m. Rest period. 

7:45 p. m. Play with family. Twice a week 
some social affair, or theater. 

9:00 p. m. Light reading. 

9:30 p.m. Relaxation exercises; prepare 
for bed. 

10:00 p. m. Retire; take forty deep breaths; 
throw off all business worry and go to sleep. 


366 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Daily Schedule for Clerks and Salespeople 

6:00 a. m. Rise; sponge bath; exercise. 

6:30 a. M. Morning toilet; shave; dress. 

6:45 a.m. M^ork about house; furnace, 
lawn, etc. 

7:00 a. m. Study period; personal efficiency 
work. 

7:30 A. m. Breakfast. 

8:00 a. m. Leave for place of business; walk 
fifteen minutes of the way. 

8:30 a. m. Begin day’s work. 

12:00 M. Lunch. 

12:40 p. m. Ten-minute walk. 

12:50 p.m. Ten-minute rest. 

1:00 p. m. Begin work. 

5:30 p. m. Leave for home. 

6:00 p.m. Complete relaxation for fifteen 
minutes. 

6:15 p.m. Dinner. 

7:15 p. m. Rest period. 

7:45 p. m. Recreation—out-of-doors, in sum¬ 
mer; movies, dances or late-hour social festivi¬ 
ties not to exceed twice a week. 

9:00 p. m. Light reading, study or corre¬ 
spondence courses. 

9:30 p. m. Exercise; prepare for bed. 


WORKING SCHEDULES 367 


10:00 p.m. Retire; prepare the mind for a 
refreshing sleep by auto-suggestion. 

Daily Schedule for the Physical Worker 

5 :30 a. m. Rise; rub-down; toilet; shave; 
dress. 

6:15 a. m. Work about the house. 

6:30 a. m. Half-hour of study. 

7:00 a. m. Breakfast. 

7:30 a. m. Leave for work. 

8:00 a. m. Begin work. 

12:00 M. Lunch. 

12:30 p. m. Relax and rest. 

1:00 p. m. Begin work. 

5:00 p. m. Quit, and start for home. 

5:30 p. m. Take bath; change clothes, rest 
till dinner. 

6:00 p. m. Dinner. 

7 :00 p. m. Half-hour rest. 

7:30 p. m. Hour of recreation with family. 

8:30 p. m. Read or study. 

9:00 p. m. Ten minutes’ setting-up exer¬ 
cises; prepare for bed. 

9:30 p. m. Go to bed; hold a positive thought 
in the mind before going to sleep. 


368 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


Daily Schedule for Stenographers and 
Office Workers 

6:00 A. M. Rise; bath and exercise. 

6:30 a. m. Toilet and dress. 

6:45 a. m. Housework. 

7:00 a. m. Study period; special attention to 
personal efficiency. 

7:30 a. m. Breakfast. 

8:00 a. m. Walk to office. 

8 :30 a. m. Begin routine work. 

12:00 m. Light lunch. 

12 :30 p. m. Twenty minutes’ vigorous walk¬ 
ing, with deep breathing. 

1:00 p. m. Begin routine work. 

5:30 p. m. Walk home. 

6:00 p. m. Lie down and rest for fifteen 
minutes. 

6:15 p.m. Dinner. 

7:15 p. m. Rest period. 

7:45 p. m. Recreation—games, social af¬ 
fairs, etc. 

9:00 p. m. Read fiction or study. 

9:30 p. m. Physical culture; prepare for bed. 
10:00 p. m. Go to bed; give the subconscious 
mind a happy thought to sleep on. 


WORKING SCHEDULES 369 


Daily Schedule for the Teacher 

5 :30 a. m. Rise; bath; exercise. 

6:00 a.m. Toilet; dress. 

6:15 a.m. Study, and outline the day’s 
work. 

7:00 a.m. Breakfast. 

7:30 a.m. Start for school; walk fifteen 
minutes of the way. 

8:00 a. m. Begin school work. 

12:00 m. Light lunch and ten minutes’ re¬ 
laxation. (If afternoon session begins later, 
allow more time for lunch and rest, and include 
fifteen minutes’ brisk walk.) 

12:30 p. M. Begin school work. 

4:30 p. m. Leave for home. Walk. 

5 :00 p. m. One hour of complete rest. 

6:00 p. m. Dinner. 

7:00 p. m. Lie down and relax. 

7:30 p. m. Study and professional work. 

8:00 p. m. Recreation—picture show, dance 
or social hour, or music. 

9 :00 p. m. Prepare for bed; physical exer¬ 
cises. 

9:30 p. m. Retire; free the mind; smile and 
go to sleep. 


CHAPTER XXY 


SPEEDING UP OR SLOWING DOWN 

Speed laws vary in different localities, but 
in one respect every man is a law unto himself. 

His personal progress and rate of achieve¬ 
ment are not limited by any city ordinance. 
The question of speed is a vitally important 
one in these modern times. 

The world does move, and it moves rapidly. 
Are you speeding up or slowing down? It’s 
one or the other. The man who answers 
“neither” is fooling himself. There is no such 
thing as standing still. The current of exist¬ 
ence is strong, and those who stop swimming, 
even for an instant, begin to drift down¬ 
stream. Competition is so keen that there is 
more truth than poetry in the assertion that 
“You’ve got to run as fast as you can to stay 
where you are.” 

Don’t overlook this point. The pace has al¬ 
ready been set . It may be too fast for you, but 


370 


UP OR DOWN 


371 


it will not be changed to suit your convenience. 
“Either make the pace or be ruled out,” is the 
verdict. Don’t be lulled into a sense of false se¬ 
curity by either of these delusions: “I’m doing 
the best I can,” or “I’m doing well enough 
now.” No, you are not doing the best you can, 
and your “best you can” may not be “good 
enough,” even now. Next year it may not be 
half good enough. Your only safe plan is to 
make “your best” still better and increase your 
speed. 

To prepare the crews for the great annual 
boat races of the big universities, in the East, 
the stroke is gradually increased throughout 
the period of training. Men who can not make 
the raised stroke are dropped out. It is nec¬ 
essary to move fast in order to qualify in any 
race. It takes speed to play in the Big 
League. Contrary to the common belief, the 
human machine is in far more danger from 
“slowing down” than from “speeding up.” 

Every man comes to a time in his life when 
he begins to “slow down,” either consciously or 
unconsciously. The dangers which beset this 
course are often hidden. Many of the points 
brought out in the preceding chapters have 


372 


TAKING IT ON HIGH 


been written with special reference to the 
young man. 

But this question of slowing down comes 
home to the older man as well. The old plan 
was for a man to 4 ‘retire” from active life en¬ 
tirely at fifty or fifty-five years of age, and rust 
out in a few years. The new plan prolongs the 
life of the old man by keeping him reasonably 
active; fit mentally and physically to the end. 
But by far the most important case is the man 
between forty and fifty who has begun to slow 
down and doesn’t know it. Such a man must 
realize that he is likely to “slow down” as the 
vigor and enthusiasm of youth begin to wane. 
He must meet this danger by matching his 
experience and judgment against the vital¬ 
ity of youth. Above all else, he must learn 
to conserve every ounce of his energy and use 
it wisely. No more can he afford to waste his 
energy as in younger days. His only salva¬ 
tion lies in learning how to “take it on high” 
easily. If the older man will conserve his en¬ 
ergy and use the skill and judgment he has 
acquired through years of experience, he can 
maintain the pace. He often makes better 
speed than the younger man, whose youth and 


UP OR DOWN 


373 


dash and endurance are more than counter¬ 
balanced by the mistakes he makes—his energy 
wasted through misdirected effort. Then, too, 
the young man often “slows down” deliber¬ 
ately—takes a notion “to knock off work for a 
while”; thinks he can pick it up some time 
later, just where he left it. Nearly always this 
is a fatal mistake. Often these temporary 
lapses become permanent. Or, if he does try 
to “come back,” he finds it very difficult to work 
up to his old-time form and speed again. In 
many cases it is never regained. “Slowing 
down” is so dangerous for a young man that 
in the end it generally proves to be absolutely 
fatal . 

But the one man, above all others, who is 
continually slowing down is the chronic back¬ 
slider. He may be either old or young. He 
is found in the ranks of youth, as well as in the 
ranks of those who are old enough to know bet¬ 
ter. No matter how often he may speed up, he 
is sure after a little spurt to “slow down.” No 
matter how great the enthusiasm and fire with 
which he begins, he is sure to “quit cold” after 
a little trial. And nearly always he has a 
“good reason” at hand to excuse his failures— 


374 TAKING IT ON HIGH 


a “reason” which fools no one but himself. 
There is such a big army of these chronic back¬ 
sliders in the world that huge fortunes have 
been made out of their weaknesses. 

We all know people who simply can not, or 
will not “see a thing through.” They would 
rather forfeit all the money they have put into 
a scheme, however good, than continue their 
payments and fulfill their contract to the end. 

The chronic backslider never sees anything 
through. He may make a brave start, with 
plenty of speed, but soon he slows down and 
falls by the wayside. He is one of those who 
never arrives . 

The doctor may prescribe for him a better 
diet, but he does not benefit, because after a 
few days he slides right back to his old habits 
of eating. The professor may outline for him 
a valuable course of study, but he fails to profit, 
because after a few lessons he lets go and 
“quits.” Tom Reed must have had the chronic 
backslider in mind when he uttered his now 
famous saying at Washington, “God hates a 
quitter.” 

Those who have read this book through “to 
the bitter end” have found jnany points on self- 


UP OR DOWN 


375 


development. You may not agree with some 
of the ideas expressed. The only way to test 
the matter, to prove the value of the plan, or 
suggestion, is to try it out fully . Don’t be¬ 
little the value of any part, or point, however 
small. Try it, test it fully, keep it up, and in 
the end you will agree with the writers. It is 
not enough to read it; you must do it. 

If you will spend a few minutes each day 
following the working schedules of this book, 
or applying the principles outlined, you will 
double your physical and mental working 
force. These few minutes each day will pay 
you rich dividends in abounding health, real 
happiness, and actual dollars. 

Leadership is a state of mind made manifest 
by constant productive activity. 

Action is the thing. 

Speed is the way. 

Do it now is the password. 

Keeping everlastingly at it is the weapon of 
defense. 

May you keep your brain alive, and your 
body young, to the end of the journey. 


THE END 






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